New Jersey Update

New Jersey Update

An AP story in Newsday reports on the stem cell bill in the state Senate. It will be considered today by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. I blogged on it briefly last week—it would take money from state bond funds that are not being used and use $50 million to set up a research center in Camden and $150 million for one in Brunswick. The Camden facility would be associated with Rutgers University. The bill has already received support from the New Jersey governor.

An article about it in the Cherry Hill Courier Post discusses some of the things the Camden facility might do and identifies questions that might be asked. According to the article, the Systems Biology Institute would focus on observing stem cell development in culture. The research could help develop treatments for cancer, work on identifying relationship between hormones, proteins, and cell behavior, or how to grow new tissue. The article focuses on the “systems biology” approach, which looks at the body holistically instead of in disconnected pieces, and says that researchers from fields such as biology, mathematics, and physics might be involved.

This sounds like exciting research to me, and demonstrates the significance of studying stem cells not for treatments alone but for a wider, deeper understanding of cellular functions. When I learned about cells as a kid in biology class, I learned about the nucleus, the cell wall, mitosis, and DNA. That was about it. They didn’t seem very complicated. How uneducated was I? Cells are pretty darned incredible, and it seems that the more they are studied the more complex and intricate their behavior is revealed to be.