By Vic Cox

With voters’ passage this month of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, better known as Proposition 71, a new state institute was created to regulate and fund stem cell research. Up to $3 billion in state-backed bonds could be issued over 10 years by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

UC is preparing to play a major role in the institute and its 29-member governing commission, according to President Robert Dynes. “We intend to contribute to the success of the stem cell research effort created by Prop. 71, both by participating in its governance and, we hope, by conducting some significant part of the research,” he said.

Prop. 71 specifies that the University is allotted a minimum of five positions on the Independent Citizens Oversight Commission (ICOC), the institute’s governing body. At the regular meeting of the UC Regents last week, representatives from UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco were named to these slots.

Also last week, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante announced that UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau would be one of Bustamante’s appointments to the ICOC.

Other commission members will be appointed by the executive and legislative branches, according to Prop. 71. The constitutional amendment directs ICOC membership to reflect nonprofit academic and medical research institutions other than UC as well as advocacy groups and business interests.

UC officials, while emphasizing the slow progress inherent in basic research, nonetheless describe the new funding mechanism as having exciting potential. “Stem cell research holds great possibilities for improving human health worldwide,” said Dynes.

These possibilities include current UC human embryonic stem cell research to understand brain cells that cause Alzheimer’s Disease; investigating ways for possible treatment of liver disease and spinal cord injuries; and tissue regeneration or directing cell growth to facilitated organ transplants.

While no embryonic human stem cells are currently used in research at UCSB, there is “talk about organizing a stem cell program,” said Dennis Clegg, chair of the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Department. “We are particularly interested in the biochemistry and molecular biology of the aging process.”