Three profs win stem cell grants

A New Jersey commission awarded $5 million in grants for stem cell biology research to 17 researchers last month, including three University molecular biologists.

Researcher Kateri Moore and professors Ihor Lemischka and Thomas Shenk were chosen from a field of 71 applicants by the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology to receive the grants, which are worth about $300,000 each.

"It's always a pleasant surprise when you get funding. I thought that our work is certainly very competitive. I was optimistic, but you never know," said Lemischka, who is married to Moore. Lemischka's grant was one of three awarded for human embryonic stem (ES) cell research.

Moore said her research, which focuses on adult human stem cells found in bone marrow, could help lead the way to growing organs from stem cells.

"You can't just take a cell and expect it to turn into a heart," she said. "You need to know the whole structure, the whole basis of that organ. My work is helping to fill in the gap about the areas away from the stem cells."

"These grants are not targeted just to ES cells, there's developed research for adult stem cells too, and I feel that's probably why my proposal got funded," Moore added. "There are many people looking at other stem cells in the body ... and they do other things that we don't even know about yet."

Leading the way

By awarding, New Jersey became the first state to officially fund human embryonic stem cell research. Though California passed a $3 billion stem cell initiative in 2004, the money has yet to be allocated, due in part to lawsuits that have stalled progress.

Lemischka explained why he thought New Jersey had not faced the same problems as California.

"Part of it is that the amount of money that New Jersey has given this year is not that much," he said. "California's $3 billion makes it a much more global thing and a lot of challenges came out of the woodwork. I expect that when New Jersey starts devoting hundreds of millions to fund stem cell research, it will have similar legal challenges, but I don't think any of them are insurmountable."

Moore said the funding is especially beneficial because it comes from the New Jersey government and not from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), her usual source. "I[t] is getting more difficult to get the research grants from the federal government for obvious reasons, such as the fact that there's not as much money to spend right now ... For stem cell research, in part ES research, it's difficult to get the federal government to support new ideas," Moore said.

Overcoming controversy

According to Lemischka, the recent scandal involving South Korean stem cell research has regrettably put a cloud over the field.

"In this case, the damage is terrible because it really feeds right into the lobby groups that are against this type of research," he said. "Now the argument is that not only do we think it is unethical, you can't even trust the scientists doing it."

Lemischka remains optimistic that stem cell research will recover, though.

"This is like a bad apple, it's not going to do [any] permanent damage," he said. "Science moves on and so will stem cell biology ... I think in the end it was probably better that it came out now than if everybody went their merry ways thinking everything done was right, then uncovering it two years from now. The sooner things are rooted out and corrected, the better."

Lemischka will be able to avoid most of the controversy in his current research, as he is working primarily with human embryonic stem cell lines that have already been approved by the federal government.

"We've never worked with human embryonic stem cells in my lab. We're going to start slowly," he said. "It's going to take a while to get going to establish technology for human embryonic stem cells."

Having already worked extensively with mouse embryonic stem cells, Lemischka will examine whether genes that have been previously identified in mice play similar roles in human embryonic stem cells.

"We were planning to get this point eventually," he said, adding that his lab's new funding will allow it to begin human ES cell research sooner than it would have otherwise. "Right now I don't have any plans to get involved in things that are going to be controversial, but you never know, sometimes work goes faster."