Calif. State's stem cell institute gives 29 grants

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State's stem cell institute gives 29 grants

Eleven academic and other nonprofit institutions each receive $2.5

million or more for research.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stem17mar17,1,890991.story?

coll=la-headlines-california

California's voter-created stem cell institute awarded 29 research

grants worth almost $76 million to researchers at academic and

nonprofit research centers Friday. The grants, the second round

announced this year, bring the amount the state is spending on the

nascent science to about $158 million.

UC San Francisco received the most grants — seven — for a total of

$17.4 million. One proposal aims to find a way to make embryonic

stem cells — which have the potential to develop into any kind of

cell in the body — form a type of nerve cell that can alter the

electrical activity in the brain circuits of patients with

Parkinson's disease or epilepsy. Another grant will fund research on

how to make embryonic stem cells develop into brain cells that can

regenerate the myelin sheath damaged by multiple sclerosis and

strokes.

Stanford University received six grants totaling $15.2 million.

Other grants went to the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in

La Jolla; the Los Angeles-based CHA Regenerative Medicine Institute;

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles; the UC San Francisco-affiliated J.

Gladstone Institutes; the San Diego-based Salk Institute for

Biological Studies; UC ; UC Irvine; UCLA; and UC San Diego. The

amounts awarded to each institution ranged from $2.5 million to $7.5

million.

Dr. Gay M. Crooks, a bone marrow transplant physician at Childrens

Hospital Los Angeles, received $2.5 million to better understand

what triggers embryonic stem cells to form blood cells. Her hope is

to someday be able to produce an inexhaustible supply of cells for

bone marrow transplants and blood transfusions, but she cautioned

that such therapies could be years away. " We're at the stage now in

the embryonic stem cell field that the bone marrow stem cell [field]

was at 20 years ago, " Crooks said. " We're still learning how to grow

the cells — what works and what doesn't. "