Research - one public-private partnership in California

Stem-cell research is moving slowly in California.  There are the issues of risk and funding. Government often funds what the private sector cannot, will not, or should not.

Sacramento Bee/David Lesher, 2/12/12. "In the future, scientists tell us, stem cells could make the blind see again, help the crippled to walk again and perhaps cure some of our most debilitating diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS.

Neurospheres forming connections.

It sounds like science fiction. Doctors wouldn't just manage your damaged or deteriorating body parts, as they largely do today. They could actually repair or replace them, perhaps using your own cells. Hundreds of billions of dollars in annual medical care is at stake as well as millions of lives that might be saved or vastly improved.

The good news is that it's not science fiction. Just last month, the only human trial under way in the United States involving embryonic stem cells reported that eyesight was improved for two legally blind women. And in California, where voters approved a $3 billion bond to support stem cell science in 2004, the president of the state's stem cell agency said he is "optimistic" that at least a few California treatments will prove successful in humans in the next five years.

The bad news in the stem cell field is the growing uncertainty about money and the time it will take to complete a cautious and evolving regulatory process - even after "proof" in human trials is achieved.  Those who speculate say that the most advanced stem cell treatments are still probably a decade away from becoming available to patients. And the cost to get them there will far exceed California's $3 billion investment. The hope was that California's bond would jump-start a biotech industry by building the laboratories and seeding early research to a point where private support would take over.

But that point of commercial viability is a moving target as private investors have grown more risk averse and the regulatory path for such radical new therapies is unpredictable. So the biggest question today in the stem cell field is not whether the science will work someday. The big questions are how will we pay for it, how will regulators know when it's ready and when will it happen?  "We are at a time when venture capital doesn't invest as early as it used to," said Larry Goldstein, a leading stem cell scientist at UC San Diego. "So the public has to do it. You may not like the system, but that's the system."  Read more. 

Posted by Kathy Meeh