Stem Cell Agency Awards $39 Million in California

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September 10, 2005

Stem Cell Agency Awards $39 Million

By Raksin, Times Staff Writer

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stem10sep10,1,301161.story

California's stem cell research agency awarded the first of a planned

$3 billion in grants Friday, announcing that a little less than $39

million would go to UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and several other

campuses to help set up programs to train scientists.

Although the amount was relatively small, competition among 26

universities and nonprofit institutions was stiff because those

selected hope to be at the front of the line for more lucrative

public financing to come.

The agency's Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee chose 16

winners.

The agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, was

set up by Proposition 71, which voters passed last year to fund a

program of research using embryonic stem cells to develop potential

treatments for disease.

For now, the institute doesn't have any of its own money to give out.

Lawsuits filed by anti-tax and antiabortion groups have blocked the

state from issuing the bonds that Proposition 71 authorized.

As a result, the agency's chairman, Klein, has been asking

private philanthropic groups to fill the void with the expectation

that they will be repaid if the agency can clear the legal hurdles it

faces.

Reynolds is program director of the Center for Genetics and

Society, an organization based in the Bay Area that has criticized

the stem cell program in the past. He said the agency should have

delayed all funding decisions until the legal issues were resolved.

" It's irresponsible for anyone to promise something you're not sure

you can deliver, " Reynolds said.

Klein, however, said the grants were key to fulfilling " the public's

mandate to advance stem cell research both responsibly and rapidly. "

" With state leaders' help, " he said, " we should be able to fund the

grants by next month. "

Klein said he expected that the groups that have sued would lose in

court, allowing the bond sale to go forward, because to win they

would have to demonstrate something he called implausible: that stem

cell training would cause " irreparable harm " to the state.

" But in any case, " he said, " we had to announce the grants today, to

make it clear that California is poised and ready to recruit the

nation's best and brightest stem cell researchers. "

The grant requests were initially judged by a group of out-of-state

scientists and researchers, which made recommendations to the

oversight committee.

Many members of the oversight committee had affiliations with the

groups they were evaluating and had to remove themselves from judging

in those cases.

, the co-director of UC Irvine's Stem Cell Research

Center, said he thought the committee may have chosen his program,

despite criticism from the out-of-state advisory board that it

lacked " a strong track record in stem cell research, " precisely

because " we have a lot of junior faculty poised to make a bigger

impact on research than those in bigger, more established

institutions. "

Dr. Judith Gasson, the co-director of UCLA's stem cell research

institute and director of the university's Jonsson Comprehensive

Cancer Center, speculated that the agency chose UCLA because of " our

special strengths in monitoring and treating stem cells. We are the

only publicly funded university in California to have FDA-approved

facilities for stem cell transplantations. "

Gasson acknowledged that the $3.75 million her students will receive

over three years won't buy much in the research world.

But she said she believed that the award would position UCLA for

money to fund more ambitious research in the future.

Zach Hall, the agency's interim president, didn't quarrel with that

interpretation.

" When we were considering the applications, " he said, " we were well

aware that research training and research performance are closely

linked. "

The other winning institutions were UC San Francisco, UC San Diego,

UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC , as well as the La Jolla-

based Burnham Institute for cancer research; Caltech; Childrens

Hospital Los Angeles; the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla; the

J. Gladstone Institutes, affiliated with UC San Francisco; the Salk

Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla; and USC.