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Stem Cell Initiative
GROWTH
| Columbia Launches Stem Cell Initiative NEW RESOURCES FOR RESEARCHERS; NEW DIRECTION FOR REHABILITATION MEDICINE |
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| James Goldman (left) and Joel Stein are currently guiding CUMC’s Stem Cell Initiative. |
It’s the type of interaction that the new Stem Cell Initiative at CUMC is designed to encourage, says the Initiative’s interim director, James Goldman, MD, PhD, professor of pathology and cell biology.
“There are common themes shared among different types of stem cells, so advances made in one cellular or tissue system can help investigators working in other systems,” Dr. Goldman says. “We already have more than 70 stem cell labs, representing virtually every organ system in the body and a multitude of different diseases, so having an organization that ensures rapid communication of advances is critical to make the research more efficient and productive.”
The Initiative, announced in Nov-ember, will increase resources and attention on fundamental and translational stem cell research at CUMC, seeking to promote interactions among many different scientists and departments. Several new scientists are expected to be recruited over the next 18 months.
Two of these scientists will be recruited to new endowed professorships in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, soon to be renamed the Department of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine, pending University Senate and Trustees approval.
Joel Stein, MD, the new chair of rehabilitation medicine, who will oversee these new recruitments, says the new researchers and name change reflect the department’s new mission.
“From a conceptual perspective, rehabilitation medicine is about restoring function,” Dr. Stein says. “The challenge is that existing treatments only take us so far. We can partially improve patient abilities, but the outcomes are not what we want them to be. If there is a way to utilize one’s own stem cells, or to add new stem cells, to repair damage, there’s a chance to achieve restoration that we can’t get with current techniques.”
Stem cell research has been actively promoted at CUMC for the past 10 years, through philanthropic contributions, individual research grants, and an NIH Stem Cell Training Grant, which provides pre- and postdoctoral research stipends. Several groups are pursuing translational research, with the goal of using stem or progenitor cells to intervene in pathological conditions.
Drs. Goldman and Stein say that now is a good time to begin the Initiative, since President-elect Barack Obama promised to lift President Bush’s restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research. Funding is also now available from the Empire State Stem Cell Trust Fund, which will provide up to $600 million over 11 years for stem cell research in New York. The fund has already delivered more than $1 million to CUMC for stem cell research in the past year.
Starting an initiative now also makes sense for scientific reasons, Dr. Goldman says. “There are stem cells in most, if not all, of our organs that are capable of regenerating new cells and tissues when needed,” he says. “We’re just now getting good at picking these cells out and understanding how they work, and perhaps in the future, we can learn how to use them clinically.”
A second recent advance – the transformation of a patient’s skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells, accomplished by a team of Harvard and Columbia researchers – has huge potential to help researchers understand the genesis of complex disease like ALS and develop better treatments. “This use of stem cells may, in fact, have just as big a clinical impact on treatment as the use of stem cells for regeneration,” Dr. Goldman says.
The news media’s coverage of the potential of stem cells for regeneration has, unfortunately, given the impression that cures will come next week, adds Dr. Stein. “That’s not feasible, but the field is clearly moving forward. The potential in the long term is great.”
