State To Fund Bio Research

As Harvard prepares to pour $1 billion into scientific research in Allston, a bill is expected to pass the Massachusetts legislature within the next few days that would provide $1 billion in public funds for cutting-edge life sciences research.

While much of the money is intended to shore up the Commonwealth’s position as a center for biotechnology, a significant share of the funding is expected to be used for stem cell research at universities like Harvard and the University of Massachusetts.

The brainchild of Mass. Gov. Deval L. Patrick ’78, the Massachusetts Life Science Initiative would allocate $500 million for construction of research facilities, as well as $250 million for fellowships and grants and $250 million in tax incentives over ten years.

An additional $250 million would be provided in matching funds from private business for grants and training for private companies.

“Because Massachusetts represents a wealth of biomedical research, this is intended to grow on that and provide a more durable source of strength,” said David T. Scadden, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. “This is much bigger than stem cells, and that’s a very exciting piece of it.”

The initiative comes after California passed a similar $3 billion proposal targeting stem cell and other biomedical research in 2004.

California has faced legal and logistical difficulties in distributing funds, especially because of opposition to public funding of stem cell research on ethical grounds.

But Brock C. Reeve, executive director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said that he does not believe the Massachusetts initiative will experience the same delay between the enactment of the legislation and the actual disbursement of funding.

“People across different sectors are already talking to one another,” Reeve said, citing academia, industry, and political constituencies as examples. “It all depends on how the [grant] review process is set up.”

Although the Harvard Stem Cell Institute receives most of its funding from private sources, the Life Science Initiative would promote collaboration between industry and academia, as well as support the research efforts of junior faculty—two areas to which Harvard does not specifically allocate funding, according to Scadden.

Several researchers who made the move from Harvard to West Coast institutions in the past few years said California’s program had indirectly influenced their career paths.

“I came because there was a new, exciting institute that was being established,” said Hanna K. A. Mikkola, who became an assistant professor at UCLA after leaving Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “I could see the energy at the institute. I could see this would be a very fruitful environment for me.”

But both Scadden and Reeve noted that Harvard has seen an equal number of professors moving both to and from California, and that the University’s strength in the life sciences continues to attract researchers.

“One of the key factors for the success of the stem cell institute is the fact that we have a collection of the world’s leading researchers,” Reeve said. “The work we started so far, in terms of helping research in the field, I think will just accelerate.”

—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached at ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.