printable versionProp. 71 victory opens new era for research
Scientists predict that millions of dollars will come to campus to promote study of stem cells.
BY AMY ADAMS
With yesterday’s approval of Proposition 71, labs across California can stop dreaming about working with embryonic stem cells and start expanding their research programs.
The measure establishes the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which will provide approximately $3 billion over the next 10 years to support stem cell research in California. Stanford, UC-San Francisco, UC-San Diego and other medical research institutions in the state are likely to be among the recipients of the state funds.
At 9:20 p.m. Tuesday, with 9 percent of the vote tallied, about 60 percent were in favor of the measure, 40 percent against. The Associated Press had already declared it victorious, noting that exit polls showed that people of all ages, income and education had backed it.
Stanford scientists predicted that the state’s support of stem cell research would attract other top researchers to relocate to California, as well as prompt states such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, which are major centers of medical research, to develop their own lines of funding for stem cell research.
The victory clearly shows that Californians value the medical developments that could come through embryonic stem cell research. And it’s a direct rebuke to the federal government, which under the order of the Bush administration has restricted funding to research using pre-existing cell lines. These 19 lines can’t be used for medical therapies or to study the genetic roots of disease.
“Although this would be the voice of one state, it is clearly the voice of the people and the message is clear—they want this kind of research to go on,” said Philip Pizzo, MD, Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the School of Medicine. Indeed, the vote was an unusual moment in which the public, not the experts, set funding priorities for medical research—decisions that are almost always the province of the National Institutes of Health.
Projects funded through Prop. 71 could involve the creation of new stem cell lines, followed by work involving those new lines. Money could also go to projects with cell lines already approved for federal funds.
But before these funds can be distributed, a governing council must be established to oversee the institute that will disburse the money. Stem cell experts, including bioethicists, must be named to a panel that reviews grant applications and ensures that they adhere to the highest ethical and scientific standards. Although no members have been assigned, Pizzo collaborated with faculty members Paul Berg, PhD, and Irving Weissman, MD, to compile a broad and scientifically rigorous group of candidates to be considered for the panel.
This new source of funds is expected to be a boon for Stanford stem cell researchers. Pizzo said that grants to the medical school will likely help to recruit new faculty, to fund new and continuing research and to develop stem cell research facilities. Pizzo added that the school remains opposed to reproductive cloning, a position consistent with Prop. 71.
Weissman, director of Stanford’s new Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, already is looking for Prop. 71 money to fund the institute’s facility, now slated to be one floor in a planned four-floor medical school building. That space will house eight institute faculty and 20 to 30 additional collaborators. The mere existence of the new funds will make it easier to lure scientists to the institute. “When I go to recruit people who are devoting their lives to this research, they’re having trouble funding their work,” Weissman remarked. “If I said to them, ‘In California you can apply for grants that will cover your full expenses,’ that would be very appealing.”
Theodore Palmer, PhD, assistant professor of neurosurgery, says Prop. 71 money would help move his work from mouse to human embryonic stem cell lines. He has been studying mouse embryonic stem cells as a way of treating Parkinson’s disease. To turn this work into cures he must repeat those experiments with human cells, but the only cells available to him with NIH funding are limited in number and have prohibitive licensing fees. “This funding allows me access to human embryonic stem cell lines without fees attached,” he said.
Palmer added that curing disease is the most talked about but perhaps least important aspect of embryonic stem cell work. Creating new lines from people with genetic diseases would let researchers study how and why cells carrying these mutations become diseased. “With this work we could think about preventing the disease before it starts,” he said.
Creating these new lines requires a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which Palmer said he’s eager to use in his lab. “I can’t do SCNT now because I don’t have a history of that research,” he said, and he can’t get federal funding to do it. With Prop. 71 ending the financial barrier he said that one good postdoctoral fellow could seed his lab with the cell lines needed to study the genetics of Parkinson’s and other diseases.
Of course, stem cell research may still face federal opposition. A bill banning SCNT has passed the House of Representatives, and a similar measure was introduced in the Senate. If the Congress and the president approved such legislation, federal law could constrain the research that Californians have embraced.
But the Prop. 71 vote suggests that the momentum has shifted and that other states will follow California's lead. “This was a bellwether,” said Weissman.