NEW JERSEY: Stem Cell Advocates To Request $1B
Scientists say Jersey can lead the way toward a biotech miracle
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
BY KITTA MacPHERSON
Star-Ledger Staff

TRENTON -- Emboldened by the success of a stem cell ballot initiative
in California last week, two scientists who have long pushed for an
ambitious research center for the biotechnology in New Jersey said
yesterday they will ask legislators for $1 billion to fund the
effort.

Appearing at the Statehouse Annex before a conference room packed
with legislative staff and reporters, Wise Young, a spinal cord
researcher at Rutgers University, and Ira Black, a neuroscientist at
the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, brought
slides of regenerating brain cells and a photo of a smiling naked
baby with a genetic disorder to help plead their case for a state
bond issue.

Black and Young described the economic climate in California, where
voters approved $3 billion for human embryonic stem cell research, as
a 21st-century gold rush. Virtually every biotechnology firm and
pharmaceutical company in the United States, they said, is looking to
establish a foothold there. That seemingly inevitable investment by
state firms, they argued, could stay local if New Jersey is smart and
invests aggressively.

"I understand New Jersey has a significant budget problem," said
Young, who hopes to one day cure paralysis by using stem cells to
replace the neurons deadened by spinal cord injuries. "But a $1
billion bond issue paid out over five years is what is needed. We
need to try to not seem tentative. This is an urgent matter."

Legislative budget analysts, who project a potential shortfall of $4
billion for next year, have worried for some time about the state's
growing indebtedness caused by a slew of recent bond issues.

Yet advocates of stem cell research argue it could be the foundation
of a new industry that would complement the state's existing strength
in pharmaceuticals.

New Jersey already has committed $9.5 million to fund the Stem Cell
Institute of New Jersey, parts of which will be spent on construction
of a mammoth facility in New Brunswick and to recruit investigators.
Officials at Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey, which will jointly manage the center, also
have committed $2 million.

The present investment, however, is a "promissory note," said Black,
adding: "It is obvious it can't carry us into the future."

In California, the bond funds will be doled out by an advisory
committee to various applicants. The New Jersey effort would be more
centralized.

"We want to unlock the potential of this revolutionary science in a
coherent, coordinated campaign under a roof where people will talk
about it to each other all the time," said Black, founding director
of the institute.

Black, Young and other supporters of the stem cell effort are pinning
their political hopes on state Senator Richard Codey (D- Essex), who
will become acting governor once Gov. James E. McGreevey resigns Nov.
15. McGreevey's term was cut short when the married governor revealed
a homosexual affair.

Codey has been a long-time supporter of stem cell research and set
the stage by writing some of the initial legislation. McGreevey, who
has made his support of stem cells a signature issue of his
administration, mentioned the effort in his farewell address Monday
in Trenton.

Scientists also had expected McGreevey to make a stump speech for the
bond issue at a stem cell research symposium scheduled for tomorrow
in New Brunswick. However, conference organizer Sherrie Preische, an
astrophysicist and executive director of the New Jersey Commission on
Science and Technology, said that though she expected the governor to
come, she wasn't positive he would attend.

The symposium will showcase the strength of stem cell research in New
Jersey, she said. Forty scientists from universities and biotech
companies will make presentations and more than 200 scientists from
the state's drug companies, biotech firms and universities will
attend.

The success of the California ballot initiative, she said, has
inspired the state's scientific community to be bold enough to push
for a bond issue. "It has given us the political will to get things
started in New Jersey," she said.

In gaining support for the bond issue, scientists undoubtedly will
have to overcome the ethical qualms that some hold for a technology
where fertilized eggs are destroyed so that embryonic stem cells --
which can morph into any other kind of cell -- can be extracted.

"I have some questions," Tasha Kersey, a staff member of the Assembly
Republican office, said after hearing the scientists' presentations.
She said she held some of the same ethical reservations as President
Bush, whose decision to limit all federal funding for stem cell
research to a handful of cell lines created before 2001 has slowed
research and spurred states like California and New Jersey to build
substitute programs.

Rutgers' Young said such ethical concerns are based on "yesterday's
technology." He believes it won't be long before scientists can
genetically engineer a person's individual cells to become stem
cells. If reproductive cloning is possible, and Dolly the sheep
proved that, then advances in stem cells are too, he said.

Black said the research he is conducting may someday help to cure
patients with brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease and
Alzheimer's. He showed slides of tiny, undifferentiated clumps of
stem cells that slowly turned into branching brain cells -- some
migrating to the frontal cortex, others lining up in the hippocampus,
where learning takes place.

Scientists at Tulane University in Louisiana and St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital in Tennessee, Black noted, are conducting clinical
trials using stem cells to treat children with brittle bone disease,
a rare abnormality in the bone structure that causes painful,
disfiguring multiple fractures over time. To make his point, Black
flashed a photo on a screen showing a smiling baby with the disorder.


"This is more than a hope for certain diseases," he said. "The
promise is already being realized."

SOURCE: Newark Star Ledger, NJ
http://tinyurl.com/6emlr

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