Stem cell research initiative would bring benefits to L.A.

Think aid, not cure-all.

That's the potential benefit to the lagging L.A.-area biotech industry should a proposed $3 billion ballot initiative that would fund embryonic stem cell research be approved by state voters in November.

The initiative, which would annually disburse $250 million or more over 12 years, could make California a world leader in one of the most promising new fields of medical research, with therapeutic applications in heart and brain diseases, paralysis and other conditions.

Locally, it would be expected to fund ongoing stem cell research at the City of Hope, USC and other leading area institutions, and encourage additional efforts. The initiative also sets funding for "translational" research--work that might be done by private companies seeking to bring a therapy to market.

However, Los Angeles biotech researchers in other disciplines already receive lots of funding and the new dollars would have to be shared with the rest or me state.

"The issue here in Los Angeles is that the science is excellent, but it does not find its way to the marketplace," said Ahmed Enany, executive director of the Southern California Biomedical Council. "The devil is in the details-the money will be spent, where these centers will be located."

Aside from Amgen Inc., the nation's largest biotech firm that's located just over the border in Ventura County, most of L.A.'s biotech companies are startups, aside from some medical device companies.

While Southern California overall receives $1.4 billion annually in biomedical research funding from the National Institutes of Health, a recent study by the Milken Institute placed the county's biotech industry behind San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland.

However, the stem cell initiative includes some fine print that might be advantageous to Los Angeles.

The money will be disbursed by a 29-member oversight committee that could have a good share of representatives from the Los Angeles area, though members cannot vote on proposed funding for the institutions they represent, said initiative co-chair Robert Klein, a Palo Alto real estate developer.

UCLA has a designated slot on the committee as one of five University of California campuses with a medical school. There also would be specific slots for other universities, as we, as independent hospitals where stem cell research is under way.

USC, Caltech, City of Hope, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are likely candidates for these other slots.

"Fifty percent of all the biotech research capacity in the world is in California, which is more biotech capacity than any other country in the world," said Klein, who donated $1.5 million to the campaign and whose son has juvenile diabetes, a potential target of stem cell therapies.

There is also language that calls for 10 percent of the funding to go toward building nonprofit research institutes. That's funding USC is already eyeing as it moves forward with plans to build additional research capacity at its medical school, including a stem cell research center in a planned Institute for Integrated Biology and Medicine.

"We hope the initiative will allow us to get some help," said Dr. Zach Hall, senior associate dean for research at USC's Keck School of Medicine.

Less clear is whether any money might be available for the university's stalled proposal for a biotech park next to the medical school, a place where startups would seek to commercialize basic science.

The $300 million in the initiative is for bricks and mortar non-profits would use to build basic research facilities. But the initiative also calls for providing money to commercial startups seeking to create therapies they can bring to market, so some funds could be used toward the park.

Venture capitalist Michael Gordon, a managing partner at Meritech Capital Patners in Palo Alto who donated $250,000 to the initiative, said he believes the money will be a shot in the arm to stem cell startups, whose formation has been hindered by restrictions President Bush signed into law in August 2001.

(Those restrictions limited not only federal funding but also, due to religious concerns, the number of embryonic stem cells available for research.)

"No venture capital firm in their right mind will invest in stem cells when you have this federal funding prohibition, but now the state could provide enough money to get research off the ground and the venture firms would come in," said Gordon, a Type 1 diabetic since childhood.

It's expected that the earliest therapies from embryonic stem cell research are likely l0 years away.