New York ? A courier will hand over vials of human embryonic stem cells at a nondescript office building in Washington Heights this week, where they will become research material at the newest private laboratory set up to circumvent federal limits on human embryo research.

Earlier this spring, and on the same block near the Columbia University campus, another privately funded laboratory opened. It will work with Harvard University on its newly announced plans to conduct stem cell experiments with human embryos and donor eggs.

Independent of the federal funding that normally fuels biomedical advances, these two new labs hope to spur research on effective treatments for Lou Gehrig’s disease – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – and diabetes by developing human stem cells tailored to each disease.

They also want to help New York researchers keep pace with a $3 billion state-funded effort slowly taking shape in California, said officials at two foundations that raised funds for the facilities.

Last month, human stem cell cloning experiments resumed at the University of California, San Francisco, where researchers so far have raised $16 million from private donors. At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., researchers quietly set up a private facility a year ago for experiments with stem cells from human embryos.

These projects add to mounting evidence that the Bush administration’s efforts to limit stem cell research, intended to uphold the sanctity of the human embryo, have spawned a growing archipelago of privately funded stem cell labs.