CONNECTICUT COMMITMENT: Stem Cell Program Justifies Support
By Don C. Reed
Across the entire country, just six states actively fund stem cell research: California, Texas, Minnesota, Maryland, New York -- and Connecticut.
Connecticut’s program, expanded to become the Connecticut Regenerative Medicine Research Fund under Governor Dannel Malloy, was signed into law by Governor Jody Rell in 2005. But, as any friend of research can tell you, that is only the beginning. Too many programs start off strong, and then are slowly strangled for lack of funding.
http://ctinnovations.com/rmrf
Fortunately, Connecticut Governor Malloy stands by the program. A forward-looking man, Malloy has been a featured speaker at the International StemConn meeting for years. His steadfast support for biomedicine has earned him the thanks of every American family that suffers chronic disease or disability.
This is real to me, because I have seen the research work.
On March 1, 2002, in the Roman Reed Lab of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center, I held in my hand a laboratory rat which had been paralyzed, but which walked again—because it had received an embryonic stem cell therapy. That same therapy is now in clinical trials, recently restoring hand and arm motion to Chris Boesen, formerly paralyzed from the neck down.
https://news.usc.edu/107047/experimental-stem-cell-therapy-helps-paralyzed-man-regains-use-of-arms-and-hands/
California and Connecticut share a commitment to cure. We want to heal chronically ill or injured people: to make them not just better, but well.
In California there is a little girl who had “bubble baby” disease—notice that word “had”—past tense. Research funded by California helped bring about a cure for Evangelina Padilla Vaccaro, previously diagnosed with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease. Typically, being diagnosed with SCID is a death sentence. But Evangelina? I have met her at a couple of the California stem cell program meetings, running around cheerfully. She can go outside and play, instead of being imprisoned in a sterile room in hiding from a common cold which might have been fatal. She is well—because California hung on, and fought this chronic disease with dedicated funding.
Connecticut is our sister in struggle. Together, we fight diseases and disabilities considered incurable since the dawn of recorded history—and we are winning.
How was Connecticut, a small state, able to achieve world renown in medical research? Three reasons: first, her top-flight educational institutions collaborated—Yale, the University of Connecticut, Wesleyan University and most recently Jackson Laboratory; second, the Nutmeg State’s leadership understood and supported it, especially federal Senator Chris Murphy, who HELPED develop the program while serving in the state senate; and third because the people of this small but great state made a commitment.
Example: Epilepsy can be an incurable disease. It is characterized by “the loss of interneurons, leading to over-excitation in the brain and therefore seizures.” Connecticut scientists Drs. Janice Naegele, Gloster Aron, and Laura Grabel of Wesleyan University are examining the efficacy of stem cell therapies for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, examining whether embryonic stem cell-derived interneurons can suppress seizures and restore function to epileptic mice.”—courtesy Laura Grabel.
Example: Dr. Caroline Dealy is working on a cure for arthritis, to use stem cells to replace worn-out cartilage with new, via specialized cells called chondrocytes.
Example: Drs. Stormy Chamberlain and Marc Lalande are working with stem cells derived from patient skin cells to try and alleviate the severe neurodevelopmental disorders Angelman and Prader-Willi syndrome.
Example: Yale New Haven Hospital became the first place in the United States to have successfully treated congenital heart defects using stem Cell-related therapy.
Example: Profs. Jeffery Kocsis and Stephen Waxman at Yale, together with their Japanese collaborators, have made significant progress in using stem cells in clinical trials to treat patients suffering from stroke and spinal cord injuries.
Example: Diane Krause of Yale has used pluripotent stem cells to fight leukemia, which killed my sister Patty at age 24.
Example: Haifan Lin’s stem cell research may mean a new way to block the growth and metastasis of breast cancer and many other cancer cells without affecting normal cells: a poentially ground-breaking opportunity for developing the next generation of therapy that is specifically against cancers.
http://stemcell.yale.edu/people/haifan_lin-2.profile
But whenever I think of Connecticut stem cell research, I remember the great Jerry Yang, who helped found the University of Connecticut’s Center for Regenerative Biology. He worked on “…cell differentiation, with the goal of producing tissue to be used in heart surgery, organ replacement, and repair of birth defects.
When I knew him, Jerry was dying of salivary gland cancer. Even though operations cut his facial muscles and made speech difficult, he was cheerful and enthusiastic, talking a mile a minute. With every fiber of his being, he fought to improve the lives of others, and he continued working in his lab until the very last.
http://advance.uconn.edu/2009/090217/09021703.htm
Jerry is gone from us now, but his life work continues, in every effort sponsored by the Connecticut Regenerative Medicine Research Fund, as they fight to turn theory into therapy, to save lives and ease suffering.
That is the Connecticut commitment to cure.