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NEW JERSEY: Jersey Aims To Cut Off A Stem Cell Gold Rush With $3 billion on the line in California, McGreevey aims to raise more here BY KITTA MacPHERSON - Star-Ledger Staff Sunday, October 10, 2004 The people from California came knocking on Wise Young's laboratory door at Rutgers University in mid-August. At the time, New Jersey was in an uproar over Gov. James E. McGreevey's coming clean about his secret life as a gay man, and the state was awash in scuttlebutt. But the West Coast folks -- a group of eminent scientists -- hadn't come for gossip. They were in New Jersey to raise money, and expectations, for California's stem cell initiative. The program, which is pinning its hopes on a $3 billion state bond referendum next month, is so ambitious it would spend in just one year 10 times the federal budget for stem cell research. The president has limited the federal effort, citing moral concerns about the research. On their quest for cash and medical talent, the scientists took Young, a noted spinal cord researcher and stem cell advocate, out to dinner. He was just one of the many scientists, pharmaceutical executives and venture capitalists contacted by the group. Three weeks later, the California contingent left New Jersey with $3 million in pledges for their stem cell strategy. Among those who pledged were U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, (D-N.J.) who wrote a personal check for $100,000, and Andrew Breckman of Madison, a writer for the television series "Monk" who gave $1,250 because his friend, the California-based movie director Jerry Zucker of "Ghost" fame, asked him to. Problem is, New Jersey has its own designs on leading the country in stem cell research. In fact, McGreevey was an early and vigorous supporter of this controversial science, having proposed last January construction of a state institute devoted to stem cells, shape-shifting biological molecules with a potential to cure many hopeless diseases. California's aggressive stake got Young and Ira Black, a neuroscientist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, thinking. Perhaps the $11.2 million being allotted to establish the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey was not ambitious enough. If California residents approve the bold stem cell initiative on Nov. 2, and New Jersey does not have an equivalent plan in the making, it could kill plans for a New Jersey- based institute. "On Nov. 2, if the bond referendum is approved, there is going to be a huge sucking sound heard from California -- shhhwooh," said Young. "It will be the sound emitted as they pull every stem cell researcher in the U.S. to the West Coast." New Jersey is determined, however, not to allow that to happen said Young. On Nov. 11, during a statewide stem cell symposium at the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick, McGreevey is expected to ramp up the stem cell initiative, announcing a more expansive plan to fund research in the state. Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist, will make the keynote speech at the meeting. New Jersey, California and more than a dozen other states became involved in funding stem cell work after President George W. Bush prohibited federal support for research on embryonic stem cell lines created after Aug. 9, 2001. Many scientists say these old lines are not sufficient to develop therapies for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. New Jersey's present proposal calls for $9.2 million in state funds and $2 million more from Rutgers and UMDNJ, all to fund the center's construction. More money must be raised for salaries and operating costs. The California proposal, instead, will pour funds into a host of departments at leading universities as well as to clinical programs at hospitals. The announcement of an enhanced effort in New Jersey will be a swan song of sorts for McGreevey, who has been steadfast in his support for the research, and who will step down from office several days after the symposium. McGreevey announced in August that he would resign because of an extramarital affair with a man he had hired as his homeland security adviser. He has yet to submit his formal resignation and has been mute about the schedule for his final days. Young declined to specify whether McGreevey would be urging a bond referendum similar to California's or whether the proposal would involve private fundraising. The goal, however, would be to rival the Californian effort in scope. Sen. Corzine doesn't view his contribution as one that favors California over the New Jersey effort. "He sees this as a nationwide issue. If this has to be done state by state, then that's how we will have to get it done," said a spokesman for the senator, Steve Adamske. Would Corzine make the same contribution if asked by a similar group in New Jersey? "I have no idea," Adamske said. At stake, many believe, is dominance in a spooky new science that promises to cure heart disease, Alzheimer's and a host of other intractable maladies. "If you are talking about the potential of stem cells, it is a very real potential," said Alison Murdoch, a world-renowned stem cell researcher at the Newcastle University Centre for Life in the United Kingdom. "There's a logic behind the science. We just don't understand it yet." Black, the UMDNJ neuroscientist, plans to serve as the founding director of the state-based stem cell institute for a five-year term. As an expert on brain plasticity -- how the mind changes with experience -- he has been experimenting with stem cells for five years. In seminal papers published in 2000 and this past May, he first showed that bone marrow cells of rats in test tubes can be turned into brain cells. Then Black and his team transplanted stem cells into the real brains of rats and watched how they grew into neurons. The studies have broad implications for brain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's where brain tissue is actually damaged as part of the sickness. "Clinically," he said, "stem cells offer us a new way to do medicine." Black wrote the first proposal for a joint stem cell center for Rutgers and UMDNJ in 2002. The governor, he said, was taken with it and made it one of his proposals. "Then New Jersey emerged in the country and the world as stem- cell friendly," he said. Black has been traveling the country wooing physician-scientists to come to the institute. The plans call for 26 individual investigators in a center to be managed jointly by Rutgers and UMDNJ. University officials are considering three different sites next to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick for the vast, 160,000-square-foot building. The structure should be completed in three years. Black hasn't hired anyone yet but said he is looking at "the best people." The key will be to hire a stem cell maven who will draw the other members -- and their all- important research grants. A "stem cell" is an unspecialized cell at an early stage of development that has the potential to divide into a large number of cells that make up the tissues and organs of the body. Under appropriate conditions, stem cells can self- renew, that is, reproduce themselves for long periods. In this way, "cell lines," a term for large collections of identical cells, can be produced for experiments and potentially for clinical use. Some religious and philosophical leaders have argued that the eggs destroyed in the process of obtaining embryonic stem cells constitute human life and any destruction thereof is tantamount to the destruction of life. Opponents also view the technology as a precursor to human cloning. But the scope for treatment, according to those in favor of the technology, is enormous. Organs damaged by trauma or disease would not have to be completely replaced by transplantation, but merely repaired. The aim would be to colonize host organs or tissue with sufficient normal cells to restore their physiology or accelerate the repair the damaged tissue. "We're not just talking about a new field of science," said Young. "It's a new industry. There's pharmaceuticals, electronics and biotechnology. The new word being talked about for this is 'therapeutics.' New Jersey should be the center of it." Star-Ledger researcher Beverly Reid also contributed to this story. 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