BUSINESS: Community colleges, universities asked to join stem cell program

$18 million in grants will help in undergraduate training

By BRADLEY J. FIKES - Staff Writer | Saturday, May 10, 2008 10:18 PM PDT ∞

State universities and community colleges got an invitation last week to join California's stem cell research program.

A committee overseeing the $3 billion program voted on Tuesday to appropriate $18 million to train undergraduate-level students in skills useful for stem-cell research.

About 10 grants are expected to be awarded early next year by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the program's formal name.

"It's pretty neat," said Michael Fino, head of the biotechnology program at Miracosta College. "We certainly hope to be a part of that."

These grants have until now been almost exclusively reserved for top scientists at University of California campuses and other institutions actually performing the research.

The "Bridges to Stem Cell Research Awards" extends the support to schools at which lab technicians and other support personnel could be trained.

Stem cell researchers are trying to use stem cells, the 'ancestral' cells that turn into the hundreds of different cell types in the body, to cure currently incurable diseases.

The stem cell program, established with Proposition 71 in 2004, emphasizes research with human embryonic stem cells, taken from days-old embryos. This is controversial, because some people believe the embryos, which are killed, are already human individuals.

Fino said Miracosta already has a training program for biotechnology manufacturing in partnership with biotech companies such as Genentech, which operates a drug manufacturing plant in Oceanside.

Biological laboratories require not only top-level researchers but also staffs to do the day-to-day work such as running complicated scientific machinery, keeping an eye on cell cultures and keeping detailed records of experiments.

The proposal "certainly speaks to a lot of what we do here at community colleges," Fino said. "One of our missions is to ensure there's an educated and trained work force in our area. Certainly, there's stem cell research going on in North County. In Oceanside there's International Stem Cells Corp., there's Invitrogen in Carlsbad."

Fino said cell culture, one of the skills specifically listed in the new grants, is already part of Miracosta's biotech curriculum.

In addition, other educational institutions such as Cal State San Marcos and San Diego State University also incorporate biotechnology training into their courses.

John Simpson, stem-cell project director for Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based consumer rights group, praised the grants. Simpson said broadening the involvement of the stem cell program to train undergraduates brought the benefits of the state program to more people.

"Everybody in the state is paying for Prop. 71," Simpson said. "And that means everybody should get a benefit from it. By their very nature, many of the grants are going to be aimed at a very targeted, relatively elite part of the educational system. They're going to go to researchers at major research institutions ... It's designed to help train people to help move into good jobs in laboratories, or perhaps into research possibilities."

Simpson said that by tapping into colleges and universities that don't have stem cell programs, the grants can help qualified students who otherwise might not have had access get into stem cell research.

The complete text of the grant awards approved by the committee is on the program's Web site in PDF at http://tinyurl.com/5y7con.

Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at (760) 739-6641 or bfikes@nctimes.com.

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