By Donna Hemmila
UC stem cell researchers demonstrated the promise of regenerative medicine to transform health care at a daylong university-sponsored technology transfer forum.
About 320 researchers, biotech executives and venture capitalists participated in the April 15 event in Burlingame. The British Consulate General of San Francisco and the Consulate General of Canada for San Francisco and Silicon Valley hosted the forum with the UC Office of Technology Transfer. Each year UC sponsors a tech transfer forum to bring industry leaders together with academic researchers and public and private funding groups.
"We really are entering a new era where regenerative medicine is living up to its promise," said Gregory Bonfiglio, managing partner of Proteus Venture Partners. "This is going to change health care."
Bonfiglio, one of the guest speakers, founded his Palo Alto investment firm to fund stem cell companies. He is targeting 15 to 18 companies with typical investments of $15 million to $20 million. The commercial market in regenerative medicine is rapidly growing. In 2008, the market is estimated at $3.6 billion, he said, and will grow to $118 billion by 2010.
UC is one of the drivers of this emerging economic force. The UC system has one of the largest stem cell research enterprises in the world. Centers on all 10 campuses are working on developing new tools for basic cell research and advancing regenerative medicine to treat and someday cure diseases such as Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes and a host of chronic conditions.
Collectively, UC's 10 campuses have received more grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine than any other university or private institute in the state: $420 million out of the $694 million the institute has so far awarded. A 2004 voter-approved bond measure created CIRM and a $3 billion pot of money to fund California stem cell research. At the time, federal guidelines limited the type of embryonic stem cell research that could be done with federal funds. In March, President Barack Obama overturned the Bush policy that limited federal funding, opening the doors wide for more public support.
One of UC's biggest private-public partnership successes in stem cell research is the recently announced world's first stem cell human clinical trial that Geron is conducting based on UC Irvine research in spinal cord injury repair. A UC Office of the President Discovery Grant funded the original research. That state-supported program invests in California technology companies that provide matching funds to work with university researchers.
The biggest contribution UC is making to this new stem cell economy is in advancing basic research and training, said Steven Beckwith, vice president of research and graduate studies in the UC office of the President, who delivered one of the keynote speeches at the forum.
"There are now avenues where stem cells can be used for therapeutic remedies, but they're limited," Beckwith said. "The real potential won't be realized until we understand the fundamental mechanisms behind these cells. That's the strength of university research."
UC is developing the human capital that will move this new field forward, he said, through student training programs dedicated to creating a new generation of researchers, entrepreneurs and health care professionals who can deliver this transformative work to the public.
Researchers from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz were among those who presented research sessions highlighting the progress of their work. Topics included bone and muscle regeneration, technologies for guiding and tracking cell development, and treating back pain and neurological diseases.
"The value for me is just hearing about stem cell research from a variety of researchers and hearing what the status of funding and regulation hurdles are," said M. Abi Abitorabi, CEO and founder of San Jose-based GIRUS Life Sciences. He founded his cell biology company in 2005 based on technology acquired from UC San Francisco to improve adult bone marrow transplant success using cord blood stem cells.