Stem cell researchers at the University are talking about their plans after Stanford received 12 grants, worth about $8 million in funding, last Friday from a state-sponsored institute.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced it will support $45 million in stem cell research by funding 72 grants over two years. This comes after a voter approved ballot proposition in 2004, which supported state-funded stem cell research.

Faculty receiving grants expressed pleasure with CIRM’s recognition of their projects as important research.

“CIRM funding is stimulating a new set of researchers to work on human embryonic stem cells, in hopes of devising therapies for numerous medical disorders that include Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases,” said Biological Sciences Prof. Susan McConnell.

Like his fellow CIRM funding recipients, Electrical Engineering Prof. Gregory Kovacs considers it a “great honor to be selected from a large number of groups with excellent proposals.”

Julien Sage, assistant professor of pediatrics and genetics, has found that securing research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and non-federal sources for human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to be extremely difficult.

“The CIRM money will provide a whiff of oxygen for a number of

scientists,” said Sage, who will be investigating the basic mechanisms that govern the proliferation and the differentiation of hESCs with a CIRM grant.

Pediatrics Prof. Kenneth Weinberg, who will be investigating the development of the thymus from ESCs with his grant, noted that since CIRM was established by Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, he feels “a more personal connection with the funding and a heightened sense of responsibility for stewardship of the project.”

“It’s really wonderful to see Stanford and our state take the lead in an important endeavor that I hope will set a research agenda for the rest of the country,” Weinberg said.

Kovacs echoed his sentiments.

“The great thing about the CIRM funding process is that we — the community — have been able to go from vote to funds in a relatively short period of time,” he said. “This will hopefully demonstrate a new approach to state level, rapid thrusts into timely or controversial scientific areas of great importance.”

Joseph Wu, assistant professor of medicine and radiology, will use the CIRM funding for his lab’s inquiries into to the fundamental biology of hESCs, namely survival, differentiation and teratoma formation. Wu applauded Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who handed out the grants in Burlingame last week, and the people of California for their “courage and foresight” as leaders in the stem cell research arena.

“This is the right way to proceed in stem cell research — to bypass the partisan politics and focus on the science — because I think it’ll be a long way before we understand enough about ES cell biology and feel safe and confident to translate to clinical studies,” Wu said.

Phillip Yang, assistant professor of medicine, described California’s stem cell research efforts as “unprecedented.”

“We all aspire to be responsive to the initiatives set forth by CIRM, which is to cure and treat the people suffering from devastating diseases through regenerative medicine,” said Yang, who hopes to one day translate his CIRM-funded research into human clinical trials.

The CIRM monies will be used to fund a variety of innovative projects.

“I am hoping that my research will advance our knowledge of fundamental mechanisms underlying pluripotency of hESCs,” said Joanna Wysocka, assistant professor of chemical and systems biology, who received a CIRM grant after having been at Stanford for less than six months. “I feel that basic research is needed in order to better understand these unique properties and to bring ESCs into the realm of therapeutics, particularly in the area of directed differentiation and epigenetic reprogramming.”

With the aid of a CIRM grant, McConnell will be exploring the basic biological properties of dopaminergic neurons that are derived from hESCs to assess how useful they might be in future transplantation therapy.

Calvin Kuo, assistant professor of medicine, will use a newly developed tissue culture system to influence human embryonic stem cells to become intestinal cells, which would further the development of regenerative therapies for certain medical conditions.

“Regeneration of the intestine, or even construction of artificial intestine, would be desirable in diseases, such as Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, congenital short gut syndromes or traumatic intestinal injury,” he said.

Kovacs’s CIRM funding will allow him to study the viability of stem cell repair for heart muscle that may have been damaged by myocardial infarction or other disorders.

“We will grow a population of heart cells on a tiny array of electrical contacts and record their beating patterns,” Kovacs said. “After these host cells are established, we will allow a separate population of stem cells to grow into them and, using the same type of electrical contacts, determine if the stem cells are becoming functionally connected or not. With such a tool, we will be able to assess a variety of different stem cell repair approaches, including drugs that may help the process along. Our goal is to make this technology available to the growing community who wish to explore using stem cells to fight heart disease.”