Stanford Report, January 9, 2008

Young scientists get $10.7 million in state stem cell grants

BY RUTHANN RICHTER

School of Medicine researchers received $10.7 million on Dec. 12 from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in awards designed to jump-start the careers of young scientists in stem cell research.

Four researchers received multiyear grants of between $2.3 million and $3 million each as part of CIRM's new faculty awards program. The program is designed to foster the next generation of stem cell scientists in California by supporting promising researchers in the early stages of their careers, when funding is often difficult to obtain.

Each institution was restricted to submitting only four names for consideration for these grants, and Stanford was the only institution that received funding for all four.

"This is fantastic news," said Michael Longaker, MD, MBA, deputy director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and director of the Program in Regenerative Medicine. "The fact that we had all four go into the statewide pool and get funded is an absolute reflection of the outstanding young faculty we have at Stanford."

With the latest round of grants, Stanford's total funding from CIRM amounts to more than $41 million.

In this funding round, CIRM's oversight committee awarded a total of $54 million to 22 scientists at 13 nonprofit institutions. The awards will support a wide array of projects across the entire range of cell types-human and animal, adult and embryonic.

Stanford researchers who were awarded the latest grants include:

  • Anne Brunet, PhD, assistant professor of genetics, was awarded $2.3 million for work aimed at understanding what factors help maintain adult stem cells in the brain as an organism ages. Knowing what naturally keeps those stem cells healthy could lead to ways of preventing age-dependent decline in brain function and enable these cells to be used for therapeutic purposes in neurological or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
  • Howard Chang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology, received $3 million to investigate the DNA changes that allow adult stem cells to remember what tissues they belong in. Finding these changes, which tell a cell that it belongs in the liver or brain, for example, could help scientists identify when embryonic stem cells have matured into adult cells.
  • Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, received $3 million to develop rapid, inexpensive technologies for directing embryonic stem cells down a path to become cell types used to treat diseases of the central nervous system, including stroke, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
  • Joanna Wysocka, PhD, assistant professor of chemical and systems biology and of developmental biology, received $2.4 million to study changes to the proteins associated with DNA as embryonic stem cells mature into adult cells. This research will aid in future work in directing the stem cells down different developmental pathways.

    • CIRM was established in early 2005 after California voters passed Proposition 71. That proposition provided $3 billion over 10 years to fund stem cell research at nonprofit research institutions around the state.