Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund allocates its first $15M to 24 scientific projects

BYLINE: Karen Buckelew

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund has allocated its first $15 million in state money to 24 scientific projects, leaning heavily toward academic research on the more controversial embryonic stem cells.

Nearly two-thirds of the money, or about $9.5 million, is earmarked to go to 15 projects at the Johns Hopkins University. University of Maryland researchers were approved for about $2.9 million for eight studies, according to Thursday's announcement from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., or TEDCO, which administers the fund.

Just one company, RetroTherapy of Bethesda, won a slice of the money, worth about $1.5 million.

The money was approved by the legislature during last year's session to help boost Maryland's profile in a science that is subject to federal funding restrictions.

State lawmakers this year approved $23 million for the fund for fiscal 2008.

The stem cell fund's 14 commissioners took more than eight hours over the course of two meetings in recent weeks to make their decisions, reviewing in detail about half the 86 proposals - worth a total of $80.8 million - the fund received.

The members only considered the proposals rated as having the most scientific merit, as determined by a scientific peer review committee of experts from outside of Maryland.

"It was a vigorous, robust, healthy debate, for sure," said commission Chair Linda Powers, a managing director and co-founder of Toucan Capital Corp. in Bethesda. "There were a number of very hard decisions. "

The commission awarded seven of the larger Investigator-Initiated Grants for researchers established in the stem cell field, worth a potential $500,000 annually for a maximum of three years.

Seventeen projects won the smaller Exploratory Grants intended for researchers new to the field. Those awards were for a maximum of $100,000 annually for no more than two years.

Each project is likely to receive the maximum available under the grant guidelines, Powers said, but the scientists and TEDCO will work out the financial details in the coming weeks.

"It surprised me how little adult stem cell [research] there was," Powers said of the final projects, most of which involve embryonic stem cells.

A smaller portion of the project proposals before the commission involved adult stem cells, Powers said, perhaps because more embryonic researchers applied to the fund, perhaps because the scientific panel that vetted the proposals leaned toward embryonic science.

"In the research community, embryonic stem cells are considered much more jazzy than adult stem cells," she said. "I was a little disappointed not to see more of a balance. "

At the laboratory of Dr. Curt I. Civin, a stem cell science pioneer and activist and Hopkins researcher, the mood was jubilant on news the scientist had won his $1.5 million project proposal.

"There was literally just a hand-flapping, screaming celebration out in the hall," Civin said with a laugh.

The money is critical to the researchers in his lab and throughout Hopkins, some of whom have considered migrating to California, which has earmarked $3 billion in state money for stem cell research.

"This may be career-making for them," Civin said of the younger researchers. "This is a huge shot in the arm. This is a major amount of funding, equivalent to a very large [National Institutes of Health] grant. "

Civin's research on using the cells to grow bone marrow for transplants will include embryonic stem cell research lines excluded from federal funding.

The lab has had little luck in attracting private money for its work, Civin said.

"It's exceptional and wonderful we can do this now after these years of complaining of being limited," he added.

Winning one of the stem cell fund's smaller exploratory grants will allow Ricardo Feldman, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, to work with embryonic stem cells for the first time, Feldman said.

"I couldn't be more excited," he said. "There was so much controversy about [the research]. I was planning to stay out of that. But when the state came in and gave the green light for funding, I thought it would be a good time to get started. "

Feldman's project will explore the use of stem cells to create cells that carry various diseases, on which therapeutics for those conditions could be tested.

The scientist said he was grateful the fund's commissioners created a type of grant that would encourage first-timers like himself to enter the stem cell field. Institutions like Hopkins and its Institute for Cell Engineering, started with $58.5 million from a private donor in 2001, have had a better chance to advance in the field than scientists at public universities.

"I couldn't possibly compete with people at Hopkins for grants," Feldman said.

Powers, the commission chair, said, "Hopkins has a huge head start. [The University of] Maryland has excellent science, but Maryland is in the process of catching up. "

Commission members did not know which institutions they were considering for funding, she noted.

Identifying characteristics of the projects' investigators and institutions were removed for ethical reasons before commission members - many of whom are from Hopkins and the University of Maryland - discussed them in meetings held on April 25 and May 15.

Powers said she was surprised the members hadn't chosen more research from private companies.

"It kind of surprised me because, although it's in its infancy, we've got a good biotechnology industry here in the state," she said.

Jennie Hunter-Cevera, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, said perhaps not enough private companies have entered the stem cell field, still a new science.

"There's a lot of barriers that have to be removed before [the research] is going to be scaled up and into the patient," said Hunter-Cevera, whose institute won the only large stem cell fund grant to go to a University of Maryland researcher.

David W. Edgerley, secreterary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, said the specific nature of the winning projects is not important.

"The focus of the news shouldn't be on who won," Edgerley said. "The stem cell fund was created to [generate] some really good results from this science. With the work of the governor, the lieutenant governor and the legislature to increase the amount of funding, it kind of builds hope for the future of life sciences. "