Top NIH Scientist Goes to Private Sector

Top NIH Scientist Goes to Private Sector

Dr. Mahendra Rao, the leader of the stem-cell unit at the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, is leaving NIH to join the biotech company Invitrogen so that he can do embryonic stem cell research. In an interview with Wired Magazine, he said that he felt he needed to be working on a larger number of stem cell lines than those that were available through federal funding. He expressed concerns for the future of the field on the grounds that there was uncertainty about whether there would be funding for labs and research, leading to a lack of both facilities and to people willing to make stem cell research their career. I’d like to invite readers of this blog to read the whole interview (it’s not very long) to get a fuller picture of what one US scientist sees as the current state of affairs in stem cell research. Invitrogen also issued a press release on the hiring of Dr. Rao, which gives some of his background and experience.

Now, it’s hardly new for someone from the government to leave for the private sector, but when government funded research on science and health issues becomes divorced from other research to this extent, it’s bad news for knowledge and understanding.

Stem Cell Financial News

Stem Cell Financial News

A lot of the news coming out has to do with Prop. 71 in California—money is starting to flow. An AP story in the Seattle Post Intelligencer and other papers yesterday reports that, “The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine awarded $12.1 million to 16 universities and nonprofit research outfits statewide. The grants will be used to train 169 scientists and students in stem cell science basics, including ethics courses.” The recipients were 8 campuses of the University of California, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, the California Institute of Technology, the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, and 4 private non-profit research centers. The article says that some of the members of the oversight board are affiliated with institutions that got grant money; they did not participate in the review of their institutions’ applications. The Los Angeles Times reports that the grants had already been “awarded”; but it is only now, after the CIRM received a philanthropic infusion of cash last week, that the money can go to the institutions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the grants ranged in amount from $374,730 to UC Santa Cruz to $1.23 million to UCLA, and that the checks were actually delivered yesterday. It also identifies the other non-university recipients as the Burnham Institute, Scripps Research Institute, the J. David Gladstone Institutes, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Many institutions are still in need of more money to continue with programs they initiated with the proposition passed, so a lot is still hanging on the final outcome of the lawsuits.

****

In other business news, a press release on Genetic Engineering News announces a new report called “Cell Therapy - Technologies, Markets and Companies” from Research and Markets. The report says that the market value for stem cells is “expected to increase to $56.2 billion in 2010, and $96.3 billion in 2015.”

****

Internationally, the University of California-San Diego has signed a contract with the Australian Stem Cell Center at Monash University to share resources. They will build mirror-image laboratories, according to the Australian paper The Age. The ASCC is making available several embryonic stem cell lines without charge, while UCSD is providing facilities and “expertise.” The press release is on Yahoo News. The San Diego Union Tribune reports that there is still uncertainty about whether there will be money from Prop 71 (for obvious reasons). UCSD at present has no money to contribute to the consortium.

Notch Protein Key in Neural Cells

Notch Protein Key in Neural Cells

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have discovered that activating the Notch protein in embryonic stem cells causes most of them to differentiate into neural cells. According to the press release (includes a nice image), the effect is observed in both human and mouse cells and only requires the presence of Notch activating signals in the stem cell culture. Once Notch is activated in one stem cell, the stem cell communicates with its neighbors and Notch is activated in them as well. Up to 90% of the stem cells in which Notch was activated became neural cells. The researchers want to move on to see what Notch is blocking in the stem cells so that they can start to control differentiation into other types of cells.

The study is in PLoS Biology, which is an open-access non-profit journal. The press release has a link to the article. PloS stands for Public Library of Science, and the journals are peer-reviewed. I’d like to encourage people to go to the site and look around in the interest of supporting open access to information. Open source may not have the prestige of established journals (in any field, not just the sciences) but I think it is crucial to the evolution of knowledge and knowledge paradigms.

This seems like an important finding to me, by the way, since there has been so much difficulty in producing or working with neural cells. It would be interesting to see what happens if Notch is activated in different kinds of adult stem cells.

A Patient Update

A Patient Update

Well, I thought that I was going to come back from skiing to a swarm of stem cell news, but it actually hasn’t been that way; most of the stories are ones I caught on Friday before I left. The others mostly break down into money-related stories rather than research news. There was one short update from a television station (WJLA, in D.C.) about a woman who had umbilical cord stem cells transplanted in an attempt to help her paralysis. The procedure was done in Korea (not by Hwang Woo-suk or his associates) four months ago; the woman had some movement in her feet immediately after the surgery. However, she suffered an unrelated health issue that had her hospitalized for two months and is only now beginning rehab. She cannot move her feet anymore, but she does have some feeling in her lower limbs and has some other improvement. Her doctors want to see a larger trial to know more about what’s happening with her. It’s clear that the procedure was not a quick fix, but it’s not an evident total failure either.