Science News
California gives 271 million dollar in stem-cell grants
By DPA
May 8, 2008, 4:33 GMT

Los Angeles - California's taxpayer-funded stem-cell agency awarded grants of some 271 million dollars Wednesday to build stem-cell laboratories statewide, intending to circumvent a federal rule that limits funding of such research.

The money - coupled with additional money from the recipients and their donors - will generate more than 1.1 billion dollars to build the facilities which California hopes will solidify its status as the world's leading research center into next-generation medicine.

The money was raised following a 2004 voter initiative strongly backed by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue bonds worth 3 billion dollars to fund stem-cell research, mainly into human embryonic stem cells.

President George W Bush, a fellow centre-right Republican, has severely limited research into such cells because they are created from discarded human embryos.

'This is truly a momentous day for all of us,' said Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute for Regeneration Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, during a news conference in Los Angeles, where the grants were announced. 'We're very excited by what has been made possible today.'

Alan Trounson, the stem-cell agency's president, said the money will help insure the state's place in medical history.

'California will be a landmark, it will be the epicenter of the new medicine,' he said.

In a prepared statement, Schwarzenegger said the grants could lead to discoveries that 'could save lives,' adding that 'this kind of public-private investment in a growing jobs sector is exactly the kind of good news our economy needs right now.'

Embryonic stem cells can be nudged into creating a wide array of human organs that advocates say could be used to treat many human diseases, including Alzheimers. Nancy Reagan, the widow of Republican president Ronald Reagan, is a leading advocate of stem cell research. Her husband died of Alzheimers.