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FROM: USA TODAY Dec. 17, 2005 States play catch-up on stem cells By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY LOS ANGELES - Three years after President Bush announced restrictions on federally funded medical research using stem cells from human embryos, a California panel will meet today to begin the process of granting $3 billion in state money to stem cell researchers. Calif. governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supported an initiative passed by voters for $3 billion for stem cell researchers. Getty Images Moving fast on an initiative that California voters approved on Nov. 2, the 27-member committee aims to encourage research into controversial stem cell techniques to explore potential cures for 700 diseases and debilitating conditions. These include spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease. Today's meeting in San Francisco will dramatize the rejection of Bush's policy by the most populous state at a time when debates over the morality of embryonic stem cell research are popping up in statehouses across the nation, in Congress and at the United Nations. A few states - notably New Jersey, Wisconsin and Illinois - are rushing to catch up with California in encouraging stem cell research, with an eye on the prestige and economic benefits that could result. Elsewhere, social conservatives are moving to block embryonic stem cell research. Because harvesting stem cells from an embryo requires destroying it, the issue "has crossed lines with the exposed nerve of abortion politics in this country," says Daniel Perry, president of the Coalition for Advancement of Medical Research, which supports stem cell work. California's embrace of stem cell science has triggered strong reactions elsewhere: * New Jersey, Wisconsin and Illinois are budgeting taxpayer dollars or proposing California-style initiatives to try to prevent a brain drain of biomedical researchers to the West Coast. (Advanced Cell Technologies, a Worcester, Mass., company, is shopping for land in Northern California to build a branch facility.) Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, a Democrat, will ask the Legislature next year to place on the ballot a proposal to grant researchers $1 billion. The money would be raised by a new tax on Botox injections, liposuction and other "vanity" treatments. In Texas, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has asked Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican, to do what it takes to prevent California from stealing scientific luminaries from medical research centers in Houston. Pro-research bills are likely to be considered next year by legislatures in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire and Washington state. * Social conservatives in several other states are fighting embryonic stem cell research. Eight states - Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Virginia - now ban or limit such research. All but one, Michigan, were "red states" that backed Bush in this year's elections. South Dakota passed the most recent ban, in February. Next year, legislators in Missouri, Kansas and Louisiana will consider barring at least some types of embryonic stem cell research. * In Congress, both sides in the stem cell debate are gearing up for battles next year. Some bipartisan proposals would lift the restrictions Bush announced in August 2001, which limit federal financing to work with embryonic stem cell "lines," or colonies, that existed before his speech. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is sponsoring a bill that would criminalize an often-used lab technique called therapeutic cloning. The technique does not involve the reproductive cloning of human beings. In California, the ballot initiative known as Proposition 71 was spearheaded by wealthy parents of children with life-threatening diseases and was backed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It passed with a 59% majority. The state will sell bonds and give out $300 million a year in research grants for 10 years. It's a sum that dwarfs the $24.8 million that the National Institutes of Health spent on human embryonic stem cell studies this year. "It puts California on equal footing with whole nations that have made stem cell research one of their national priorities - nations like South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Sweden," Daniel Perry says. Tom Okarma, president and chief executive officer of Geron Corp., a biotechnology company in Menlo Park, Calif., says that "we truly believe (stem cell therapy) will be the most revolutionary medical advance in the 21st century, and the feds are asleep. So the message from the states is: If you won't fund this, we will." 'A matter of conviction' Stem cells are microscopic building blocks that can be converted to blood cells or to cells that form the brain and other organs and tissues. A theory behind stem cell research is that diseased cells could be replaced with healthy ones made from stem cells mass- produced in laboratories. Few social conservatives object to research involving adult stem cells that are taken from bone marrow or umbilical-cord blood. But the more flexible stem cells from 5-day-old embryos are more intriguing to biomedical researchers - and more controversial in the political debates surrounding the research. Embryonic stem cells can develop into any of the 200 types of cells and tissues in the body. "We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others," Bush said when he announced his research restrictions in 2001. "For me, this is a matter of conviction - a belief that life, including early life, is biologically human, genetically distinct and valuable." Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who favors embryonic stem cell research, says the Bush administration shows no post-election signs of easing its policy. Bush is pushing the United Nations to approve an international treaty or declaration against therapeutic cloning. The U.N. will debate the issue in February. Such a move by the U.N. could prevent researchers overseas from working with California institutions. Bush was the first president to approve federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but limited it to stem cell line that existed when he spoke in 2001. At that time, there were 78 stem cell lines available for federally subsidized experiments, says Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Now, he says, 22 of those lines are still useful. When scientists set out to develop new cultures of embryonic stem cells without federal money, they can obtain embryos in two ways: * With donors' consent, in vitro fertilization clinics provide unwanted embryos that otherwise would be destroyed. * Through somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique pioneered in South Korea, embryo-like balls that contain stem cells can be artificially created by stripping an egg of its DNA content and inserting the DNA of a donor, who may be suffering from a genetically caused disease. This is called therapeutic cloning. States play catch-up Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin says playing catch-up with California "certainly was a factor" last month when he announced a proposal for a $750 million public-private partnership to build a research institute. In Kansas City, Mo., business leaders are hoping that the privately endowed Stowers Institute for Medical Research, which opened in 2000, will be the seedbed for thousands of jobs. But proposals by two Republican state lawmakers to criminalize embryonic stem cell research could change that. Stowers trustees say they'll build a 600- job facility elsewhere if Missouri outlaws somatic cell nuclear transfer. The technique "holds the key to unlocking the body's built-in capacity for self-repair," and "no more creates human life than does growing someone's skin cells in tissue culture," says William Neaves, president and chief executive officer of the Stowers Institute. Peter Levi, president of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, says there's "enormous potential" for Stowers' discoveries to spin off start-up companies in a "Biomed Valley," but "the (legislative) threat that has been hanging over the state of Missouri is tremendous." In California, universities and research institutes are forming partnerships to apply for grants. Medical schools are planning new buildings with state money. Labs are sending recruitment letters around the USA and to other countries, "promising them everything," Okarma says. Daniel Perry says that a "patchwork quilt" of state laws is no way to guide important medical research. But it's likely that full federal funding won't happen during Bush's tenure unless biologists find a way to create all-purpose stem cells without the need for an embryo - a development that scientists are working on, says Robert Lanza, medical Advanced Cell Technologies medical director. "Scientific facts change," the NIH's Zerhouni says, "and new possibilities are always raised." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn