Now comes some hard data from Princeton University in an article in the July issue of Nature Biotechnology, written by Aaron D. Levine. He surveyed stem cell scientists nationally and verified that some of the rhetoric is reality. Here are some excerpts.
"The data indicate that US stem cell scientists were significantly more likely than biomedical scientists working in less contentious fields to have received job offers to move to new positions in the 12 months preceding the survey. This difference was particularly pronounced for international positions, suggesting US stem cell scientists are disproportionately considering leaving the country. Job offers received by stem cell scientists were skewed toward countries and states with permissive stem cell research policies."
"The survey results indicated that among the subset of respondents who were principal investigators (PIs), mobility, as measured by job offers received, was substantially higher for stem cell scientists than it was for biomedical scientists in other fields. Indeed, stem cell PIs were 1.6 times more likely than PIs in the other biomedical fields to receive at least one job offer, 5.3 times more likely to receive at least one international offer and 7.5 times more likely to receive at least one international and one domestic offer. Members of this latter group, estimated at 12% of stem cell PIs in the US, are presumably weighing the pros and cons of leaving the country to pursue their research."Levine's article continued:
"In particular, nearly 34% of the job offers reported by stem cell scientists of all levels were for positions in California. In contrast, 11% of the offers reported by the other biomedical researchers were for positions in California."
"Particularly when combined with recent reports suggesting the US is lagging in the production of hES cell publications, these results lend credence to the claim that federal funding restrictions are negatively affecting the field’s development in the United States.These results highlight the importance of public policy in shaping the field of stem cell research and hint at challenges facing policymakers."
"State policy appears to be a potent tool for recruiting scientists, and permissive policies in some states may help the US retain scientists who would otherwise move abroad. However, as the challenges faced by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine illustrate, state policies pose difficulties of their own. They risk legal challenge and preemption by federal legislation, making stem cell legislation a risky gamble for individual states."
It should be self-evident that scientists working in areas perceived to be trendier will receive more job offers than scientists working in areas considered to be backwaters. But should state and federal governments spend money based on perceptions?
ReplyDeleteFunding is an issue motivating scientists. Getting proper credit is another. In terms of what has actually motivated "big name stem cell scientists" to move, greater attention should be paid to the latter.
The Scientist said: Miodrag Stojkovic, formerly of Newcastle but now deputy director of Principe Felipe Centro de Investigacion in Valencia, Spain, said Ian Wilmut of Dolly the Sheep fame took too much credit and should not have been first author. "Yes, this is common practice in scientific publishing," he told The Scientist. "But, in my opinion, it is not fair practice." Stojkovic created the UK's first cloned human embryo while working at Newcastle University, but left earlier this year for Spain in part because he felt a colleague took too much credit for his team's work.
Of scientific substance, as opposed to who is getting what job offer, one observes that neither Stojkovic nor his former colleague still at Newcastle (Murdoch) have followed up with any work on their 2004 report of an SCNT-created human blastocyst. Both have plenty of funding. The opportunity to take credit for the first SCNT-created human stem cell line is there for the taking, now that the work of Hwang Woo-Suk is discredited.
The silence is deafening.
See also:
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/07/george-steinbrenner-approach-to-stem.html
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/06/us-congresspeople-say-us-lags-britain.html
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/05/journal-science-mentions.html
The conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that embryonic stem cell research is the most likely to lead to the development of a human pluripotent stem cell. But what if you knew it had already been done. . .in humans. . .with a non-embryonic cell?
ReplyDeleteIt has.
PrimeCell Therapeutics in Irvine, Calif. did it this spring. The company has taken stem cells from adult males and reprogrammed those cells to pluripotency, and then reprogrammed them again to grow bone, cartilage, brain and heart cells.
What if pluripotent stem cells were available --- without the ethical problems of working with embryos, and also without the other scientific problems as well?
They can be.
In the fall of 2005, researchers found stem cells in mice and reprogrammed them to become fully pluripotent, and successfully reprogrammed them again to differentiate them into many different types of specific cells from all three germ lines. They’ve done that without the scientific problem of developing teratomas (tumors) that embryonic stem cells have.
And because the cells come from your own body, there are no rejection problems or risk of inheriting genetic defects as would occur with embryonic stem cells.
But what if this model was scientifically confirmed already? The answer is that it has been confirmed by a group of academic researchers in Germany this spring.
However, as we all know, we aren’t really interested in curing mice of their problems. We want to help people. That’s the hope being promised by the supporters of embryonic stem cell research.
But what if we could create fully pluripotent stem cells from non-embryonic cells in humans without the risk of rejection problems? Would everyone still want to spend a lot of time, money and resources trying to find a way to do the very same thing with embryonic stem cells? Probably not. People would want to focus on the technology with the most promise of achieving the goal of helping people the quickest.
Forbes.com recently published an article about this breakthrough technology.
(http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2006/07/21/stem-cell-research-cz_kd_0721stemcell.html)
The promise of the future is here today.