If something comes of the private research at Harvard, UCSF and Salk
Institute in La  Jolla CA and now Columbia and unnamed NY lab, there should
be list of all the obstructionists to this research, denying them treatment.
Bush should be numero uno. Ray

Stem Cell Labs Take Private Path
Two new facilities in New York sidestep federal limits on human embryo
research and help state scientists keep pace with others.
By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Staff Writer
June 11, 2006

NEW YORK - A courier will hand over vials of human embryonic stem cells at a
nondescript office building in Manhattan this week, where they will become
research material at the newest private laboratory set up to circumvent
federal limits on human embryo research.
Earlier this spring, and on the same block near the Columbia University
campus, another privately funded laboratory opened. It will work with
Harvard University on its newly announced plans to conduct stem cell
experiments with human embryos and donor eggs.
Independent of the federal funding that normally fuels biomedical advances,
these two new labs hope to spur research on effective treatments for Lou
Gehrig's disease - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - and diabetes by
developing human stem cells tailored to each disease.
They also want to help New York researchers keep pace with a $3-billion
state-funded effort taking shape in California, said officials at two
foundations that raised funds for the facilities.
Last month, human stem cell cloning experiments resumed at UC San Francisco,
where researchers have raised $16 million from private donors. At the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, researchers quietly set up a
private facility a year ago for experiments with stem cells from human
embryos.
These projects add to mounting evidence that the Bush administration's
efforts to limit stem cell research - intended to uphold the sanctity of the
human embryo - have spawned a growing archipelago of privately funded stem
cell labs.
"We are not doing it to make a political point," said Valerie Estess,
executive director of Project ALS, which raised $800,000 to open the Project
ALS/Jenifer Estess Stem Cell Laboratory here in May.
"We are trying to advance the science," Estess said. "To not use these cells
at this point would be un-American."
In the new lab, Estess said, the foundation hopes to foster the development
of human motor neurons derived from embryonic stem cells as a way to screen
potential drug treatments for ALS. She said researchers also could explore
the basic biology of the disease that claimed her sister's life several
years ago.
The second laboratory, set up with $1 million from the New York Stem Cell
Foundation, will play a crucial role in a stem cell project, announced
Tuesday at Harvard University, by cultivating donor cells from sick patients
for embryo cloning research.
Researchers hope to develop stem cell lines that have specific diseases,
which then could be used to explore how an illness develops and to test
potential cures.
The New York Stem Cell Foundation, founded in July, is trying to foster the
research technique largely out of frustration at New York's unwillingness to
allocate state money for it.
Legislators in Illinois, Ohio, Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts have
committed state funding to fill the gap created by the federal policy.
Connecticut recently created a $100-million fund to support stem cell
research in the next decade.
But last fall, a coalition of 48 disease advocacy groups and university
research centers failed for the third time to secure state funding for stem
cell research in the Empire State.
To promote stem cell research in New York, the Starr Foundation last year
pledged $50 million over the next three years to three biomedical research
centers in the city - Rockefeller University, Weill Medical College of
Cornell University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Such private efforts are praiseworthy, but no substitute for federal
funding, Estess said.
"Raising private money and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is all
well and good," she said. "But if we could enlist the federal government and
its resources, we could solve this disease even faster."

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