In the News

As reported by The New York Times, November 25, 2007.

Suddenly, Connecticut Is Stem Cell Central

By Thomas Kaplan

In his laboratory here at the University of Connecticut Health Center, Dr. David W. Rowe looked at two X-rays that appeared too good to be true. The first showed a mouse that had part of a tibia removed to simulate an injury so severe as to require amputation. In the next, the mouse’s leg had regrown fully.

“Normally, they would never heal,” Dr. Rowe said, pointing at the first X-ray.

Connecticut is in its first year of using state funds to support embryonic stem cell research, and Dr. Rowe is one of the $100 million program’s big beneficiaries. Scientists believe embryonic stem cells can develop into any type of body tissue, which could one day be used to replace or repair damaged cells and treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer. If stem cells can help repair a debilitating bone fracture in a mouse, Dr. Rowe said, perhaps they could do the same for humans.

His experiment used stem cells from adult mice, which is fairly routine and eligible for federal funds. But the next step in his research — using human embryonic stem cells — is ineligible for federal money because, up to now, the technology requires the destruction of human embryos to extract the stem cells.

To Dr. Rowe and researchers like him, however, using human embryonic stem cells offers the best hope of being able to apply the lessons of the mice experiment to humans, and to do it on a wide scale.

Last week, a report was issued by two teams of scientists, from Japan and Wisconsin, that could quiet the debate over whether it is morally acceptable to destroy human embryos to obtain stem cells. The scientists reported that they had turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo. Scientists in both teams, however, cautioned that the methods still needed to be perfected and that it would be premature to abandon stem cell research using human embryos.

Participants in Connecticut’s stem cell program say it has been proceeding much the way it began, with a remarkable lack of controversy. (The program passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2005.)

Here at UConn, which received more grant money than any other institution this year, the effects of the program can be seen in the hum of research taking place.

Scientists’ quarters are lined with new, modern laboratory hoods and incubators, and dozens of researchers have been hired. The result, scientists say, is that Connecticut is gaining international recognition for stem cell research.

“There’s no question that this program is going to have a huge impact, and already has, actually,” said Dr. Michael Snyder, a biology professor at Yale who received the largest single grant, $3.8 million, in the program’s first year.

There is more to come. Over the next eight years, the Connecticut Department of Public Health will disburse $10 million to stem cell researchers. (The deadline for submitting applications for this year’s grant was Nov. 1.)

Last year, when $20 million was available, the state received 70 research proposals, mostly from UConn and Yale University. This year, with half that amount available, the state has received 87 proposals, said Warren Wollschlager, chief of the public health department’s Office of Research and Development, which oversees the stem cell program.

Since 2001, the White House has limited federal support to research that uses only a limited number of existing cell lines.

That is where Connecticut’s program comes into play. With state money, researchers here and at Yale have opened core facilities, the central laboratories where new stem cell lines can be cultivated. In states without public financing, scientists have no way to pay for research on new lines, and that has drawn several sought-after researchers to Connecticut.

Ren-He Xu left a laboratory in Wisconsin, where he said state funding was limited, to become director of UConn’s human embryonic stem cell facility. The state’s largesse “was the main reason I came here,” he said.

“The state money kicked in this April, and within half a year, we’ve trained more than 50 colleagues statewide,” he said.

Last year, Haifan Lin left his post as director of Duke University’s stem cell program to take over Yale’s. One factor in his decision, he said, was that North Carolina does not support stem cell research, and attracting enough private money to develop new lines proved too daunting.

“People want to go to a place where they feel they have the right environment to support their work,” Dr. Lin said.

Several other states, including New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Maryland, have approved similar programs or are considering them. In New Jersey, voters in a Nov. 6 referendum rejected a proposal to borrow $450 million over 10 years to finance more stem cell research. The state has already committed $10 million for research and $270 million to build research centers.

Three years ago, California budgeted $3 billion for stem cell research over a decade, but the program was delayed because opponents challenged the initiative’s constitutionality. That challenge was defeated this year.

In Connecticut, the only significant hurdle, Mr. Wollschlager said, was that the program proved more popular than anticipated. At first, the panel established to evaluate proposals had five scientists, but they quickly became overwhelmed with the number of applications, he said, so lawmakers added 10 members.

This year, two-thirds of the proposals came from UConn and about 20 came from Yale. Encouraging, too, Mr. Wollschlager said, is that nine biotech companies also expressed interest in financing — only two did last year — which he takes as a signal that, as promised, the stem cell program is encouraging growth in the private sector and not just academia.

UConn now has 19 laboratories and about 100 scientists conducting such research, said Dr. Marc Lalande, the chairman of the department of genetics and developmental biology.

Not all the school’s proposals have been accepted, however. One UConn professor, Xiangzhong Yang, a leading researcher in cloning, tried to draw other researchers to form a consortium in China after the state failed to back his work. Last month, Dr. Yang took a leave of absence as he battles cancer.

Scientists involved in the various programs warned that their research would not necessarily translate into clinical treatments any time soon. But that is the direction much of the research is headed in, Dr. Lalande said. “We need to be already thinking ahead: how can we take these discoveries to patients?” he said, adding, “There’s a lot of promise.”

That promise comes from the fact that stem cells can develop into any of the more than 200 types of cells in the human body. If they can be coaxed into redeveloping bone or cartilage, they could be used to reverse the damage caused by disease, birth defects and traumatic injuries.

Dr. Rowe knows something about injuries. When his father was a child in Vermont, he was kicked by a horse over a barbed wire fence and severely injured, Dr. Rowe said. Doctors at the local hospital drilled a hole in his head to relieve the pressure from his depressed skull fracture; the hole was small enough that scar tissue eventually grew to fill it in, and he did not need a metal plate.

Dr. Rowe’s father, now 95, has lived a normal life. But others who sustain traumatic head injuries, like soldiers who experience the shock of bomb blasts, do not, and Dr. Rowe said his procedure could help them one day. “The treatments that work in mice,” he said, “most of the time will work in people.”