Projects funded by the New York State Stem Cell Science program have studied projects that study human embryonic stem cells (middle).
Source of science
By Sofia Moutinho
Over the past decade, New York State has become an international hub of stem cell research. Partly that‘s thanks to one of the United States’ only state-level programs dedicated exclusively to this area of science, researchers say. But now, New York‘‘s state government has killed the program, which scientists fear will slow research progress and cause brain flow to other states and countries.
“We are amazed and amazed,” said Jonathan Teyan, chief operating officer at the Associated Medical Schools in New York. “Why would anyone end a program like this when we need science the most?”
The cancellation of the New York State Stem Cell Science Program (NYSTEM) is contained in a budget for 2022, which the legislature approved last week and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. The spending plan, which takes effect on May 1, stops funding for new grants, but complies with existing contracts until they expire. A spokesman for the state budget department, which has appropriated the program’s funds for the Department of Health, said Science that stem cell research “should progress within academic and private research communities rather than the Department of Health, which is focused on its core mission to provide direct services and achieve positive health outcomes for all New Yorkers.”
NYSTEM was founded in 2007 under former Gov. David Paterson, who then said it was one of its top priorities. At the time, President George W. Bush limited the types of human embryonic stem cells that researchers funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health could study; the New York program was established in part to fund a wider variety. Former President Barack Obama eased federal restrictions in 2009, and former President Donald Trump enforced Obama-era policies.
New york‘‘s program originally spent $ 600 million over 11 years on stem cell research, training, and equipment related to studying stem cells, which can differentiate into different types of more specialized cells to reveal important steps in human development or on new potential therapies. indicate. But the program has run into problems recently and has so far only handed out about $ 400 million. In 2016, his board stopped meeting and reporting expenses on its website, and since then awards have been inexplicably delayed: Researchers who applied in 2016 say they only received money in 2018 after several meetings in the office of the governor. And those who applied for grants last year – which are expected to support up to 70 projects with $ 50 million over 3 years – say they have never received an official response.
NYSTEM has been modestly expanded as California’s high-profile initiative, created in 2004 with a $ 3 billion mortgage company and renewed in the fall of 2020 with another $ 5.5 billion voting initiative.
Still, “NYSTEM funded a lot of important work that would not have happened otherwise,” says stem cell researcher Sean Morrison of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. ‘The termination of the program is a setback for the state of New York and for the field of stem cell biology as a whole. ”
In March, ten Nobel laureates, including Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who had no grants from the program, wrote to Cuomo and legislative leaders to make it a ‘great success ”and said its termination would stop with‘ all the momentum gained ’. They also predicted that the cancellation would encourage young scientists to pull out of the state to do research.
NYSTEM reports that its funds have supported more than 2,000 scientists and laboratory staff. The nurturing of young talent was a hallmark of the program, says pathologist Alexander Nikitin at Cornell University’s Cornell stem cell program. He says more than 50 labs in Cornell have received about $ 10 million in joint NYSTEM funding to train graduate and undergraduate students and to support facilities shared with other institutions. “All of this will be downgraded,” he said.
Researchers expect the termination to be particularly detrimental to the study of human embryonic stem cells. Since 1995, Congress has banned the use of federal research funds for experiments involving the creation, genetic modification, or destruction of human embryos. NYSTEM has become one of the few sources of money for working on these topics. Developmental biologist Dieter Egli of Columbia University is originally from Switzerland and moved to New York City in 2008 to seek support for embryonic stem cell research. NYSTEM funded his team’s work on mitochondrial transmission – the creation of human embryos with genetic material from two mothers and one father to avoid abnormalities transmitted by the mother’s mitochondria. (Congress Bans US Food and Drug Administration [FDA] to consider applications to use this method to create pregnancies.)
NYSTEM-funded studies led by Lorenz Studer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center led to the first clinical trial using human neurons produced in large quantities from embryonic stem cells to treat Parkinson’s disease; the study was approved by the FDA and begins this year. The research also led to the biotechnology company BlueRock, which Bayer recently bought for $ 600 million. Overall, NYSTEM has produced ten startups, including BlueRock, Oscine Therapeutics and Luxa Biotechnology, more than 90 patent applications and at least four license agreements.
‘NYSTEM has helped put New York on the map to develop cell therapy with a relatively small investment, ‘says Studer.
Researchers have also applied NYSTEM funding to studies of possible COVID-19 treatments. Study and molecular biologist Todd Evans of Weill Cornell Medicine created organoids and tissues from stem cells to study the effects of the pandemic coronavirus on lung, heart and brain cells and to test drug candidates. “We would not be able to do that if the infrastructure was not built with NYSTEM,” Evans said.
Some scientists remain hopeful that the state in New York will reconsider ending the program, but many prefer to relocate. “I would go to California in a heartbeat if it were not for my family,” says regenerative medicine specialist Hina Chaudhry at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, whose team uses NYSTEM funding to grow cell types that can serve as alternatives. for the use of embryonic stem cells. The work helped her team receive a subsequent $ 3 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance this research.
“If you get a new idea that no one has worked on before, it’s almost impossible to get funding from the NIH,” she says. “The loss of NYSTEM loses our opportunity to innovate in research.”