Stem Cell Research Race Is Wide Open
Doyle, scientists ready new strategy to keep Wisconsin competitive
By KATHLEEN GALLAGHER and PAUL GORES
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Posted: Nov. 13, 2004

On a Friday afternoon in late October, Gov. Jim Doyle huddled with a
select pair of scientists he had summoned to his office

The governor needed advice from University of Wisconsin-Madison
biologist James Thomson, the first person to isolate and culture
human stem cells six years ago, and from UW professor Michael R.
Sussman. The researchers engaged in an hourlong brainstorming session
with Doyle and aides.

The meeting centered on how Wisconsin could maintain its importance
in the fledgling but promising field of stem cell science. With
California voters poised to authorize their state to spend $3 billion
over the next 10 years on stem cell research, Doyle was concerned.

"We threw out a lot of ideas, just exploring how to help the state
take advantage of this discovery and take us to the next step," said
Sussman, director of UW's Biotechnology Center. "We've been the
leaders in this, but other states are really coming to the forefront
and putting a lot of money into this."

Doyle says he plans within the next two weeks to announce a strategy
to expand the state's position in the tantalizing but still-unproven
realm of stem cell research.

He wouldn't disclose details or the cost of the plan but said it will
be aimed at helping UW-Madison have the most modern laboratories
possible and encouraging more scientific collaboration.

At stake for Wisconsin is the potential - although it may be decades
away - for jobs, royalties on patents and the eventual
commercialization of therapies and cures for spinal cord injuries and
diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.

Research on human embryonic stem cells - master cells that can form
virtually any tissue or organ in the body - has been championed by
Nancy Reagan, who cared for her husband as he suffered from
Alzheimer's disease; actor Michael J. Fox, who is afflicted with
Parkinson's disease; and the late actor Christopher Reeve, who was
paralyzed from a spinal cord injury.
Global competition

California's massive funding effort, which was approved Nov. 2, is
not the only challenge to Wisconsin's attempts to maintain a foothold
in the stem cell arena. China, Singapore and South Korea all have
well-funded research efforts in the area, and countries such as
England are far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to having coordinated
plans.

Almost 60% of California's voters - spurred by proponents' promises
that it would accelerate scientific advances and generate thousands
of jobs and millions in state tax revenue - approved a bond issue
that sets up the state to dole out $3 billion in grants over the next
10 years on human embryonic stem cell research.

Although it will take time to set up the program and disperse money
to the state's universities, many expect it to make California the
epicenter of the new science.

California's annual funding of $300 million is 12 times the $24.8
million the U.S. government in fiscal 2003 distributed to UW-Madison
and other institutions.

Doyle and other Wisconsin officials insist California's efforts will
not knock their state out of the picture in terms of stem cell
research.

"I dispute absolutely that on Nov. 2 Wisconsin lost its lead or
dropped out of the race or anything of the sort," said John Wiley, UW-
Madison's chancellor.

Yet, even if Wisconsin manages to continue as a player in stem cell
research, some observers say the state's shot at future job
development took a serious blow when California voters approved the
$3 billion in funding.

"There's going to be a big movement of existing companies to
California and a whole new generation of start-ups to help them spend
that constitutionally guaranteed spending," said Bill Warren, an
intellectual property partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP in
Atlanta. "As far as job-building, California is clearly a big
winner."
California bound

Advanced Cell Technology, a Worcester, Mass., company, said last
month that it would open a human embryonic research stem cell lab in
California because of the state's support for such research.

That's just the kind of behavior the California initiative hopes to
encourage. It aims to create a consortium of government, education,
venture funding and private sector groups that will lead to the
creation of areas like the Route 128 corridor in Boston, where the
computer industry got its start, or Silicon Valley, said Peter
Balbus, managing director of Pragmaxis LLC, a Glen Ellyn, Ill.,
technology commercialization consulting firm.

"In all honesty, Wisconsin hasn't done a great job in pulling all
those pieces together," Balbus said.

Wisconsin has the most difficult piece - the research - but unlike
California or New Jersey, the state hasn't raised money to stimulate
development of start-up businesses, he said.
'A drop in the bucket'

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, is the
university's patenting and licensing arm. It will likely receive
licensing and royalty payments, but "frankly that's a drop in the
bucket," Balbus said.

He says Wisconsin should consider more tax incentives for bioscience
companies and develop a broad-based public relations campaign to
educate Wisconsin citizens about the importance of developing
technology-based industries.

"If Gov. Doyle could do anything special to create a fund to retain
and draw top scientific talent, that would be a great initiative - to
make sure they have the money to do the research they want to do,"
said Carl R. Clark, director of marketing and licensing for the
Medical College of Wisconsin Research Foundation.

If Wisconsin is to stay in the game and retain even a part of the
lead it got when Thomson in 1998 was first to isolate human embryonic
stem cells, it will need the money and talent to compete fiercely
against not only California, but a growing stem cell research effort
that already reaches well beyond the United States.

"The Chinese and South Korean governments have put enormous amounts
of money into stem cell research, and their labs are as well-equipped
as any lab in the West - I think that's where the action is," said
Stephen Minger, an American scientist working at King's College in
London who isolated a human stem cell line with the most common
cystic fibrosis mutation. He recently returned from a two-week trip
to China, Korea and Singapore, during which he and a group of
scientists visited four or five labs a day.
Key patents

Wisconsin has key patents and WiCell, the non-profit subsidiary of
the school's licensing arm whose mission is to distribute the
school's five embryonic stem cell lines and support stem cell
research at UW-Madison.

California will have the money to lure top and potential scientists
and companies looking to commercialize their research, said Arthur L.
Caplan, chairman of the medical ethics department at the University
of Pennsylvania and co-editor of the fourth edition of the book "The
Human Cloning Debate."

"Wisconsin's leadership ended Nov. 2," Caplan said.

The university has "active measures under way" to address potential
faculty raids and research funding issues, UW's Wiley said. He
declined to elaborate on those measures, but he also cited the
privately funded WiCell facility, which has "a number of
breakthroughs that haven't been announced."

The goal for WiCell is to double within three years the ranks of the
54 investigators working with human embryonic stem cells and double
the $4.5 million in research grants it received in 2003, said Andy
Cohn, a spokesman for WARF, the university's patenting and licensing
arm that oversees WiCell.

Cohn said that in terms of the number of published articles and
patents, and funding, UW-Madison leads stem cell science and "we have
every intention of maintaining our leadership."

"Sure they're going to make a run at (our scientists), but most
places don't have a WARF providing a whole independent lab; and a lot
of the hassles other researchers have to put up with, ours don't,"
Cohn said.

UW-Madison over the last 10 years has spent $1 billion on
infrastructure, much of it involving science buildings and labs,
Wiley said.

In 2000, for example, it launched its $317 million Biostar Initiative
to build labs and attract top scientists to the campus.

"We can't let up. This is an area where if you stand still, you fall
backward," said UW's Wiley.

Jason Gertzen and Steve Walters of the Journal Sentinel staff
contributed to this report.

From the Nov. 14, 2004, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

SOURCE: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI
http://tinyurl.com/5uc8f

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