With a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, UC Davis will establish a new research center to study cellular therapies for the treatment of childhood diseases.

The new Center for Pediatric Stem/Progenitor Cell Translational Research will bring together investigators from institutions throughout the United States and Canada. It will be one of two new stem cell "Centers of Excellence" funded by the National Institutes of Health.

On Monday, the NIH also awarded a $16 million grant to the University of Wisconsin — where human embryonic stem cells were first isolated — to host the first federally funded bank of stem cells. That bank will house many of the officially sanctioned batches of human embryonic stem cells.

And with its new center, UC Davis will play a key role in that national effort. The multidisciplinary partnership is aimed at unifying investigators and research programs across basic science, translational, and medical disciplines. In addition to UC Davis, the other center will be housed at Northwestern University.

Alice Tarantal, a professor of pediatrics at UC Davis School of Medicine and at the California National Primate Research Center who is director of the new center and principal investigator of the grant, said, "The pediatric center provides a tremendous opportunity for scientists to address some of the major questions about stem cells and to focus on the development of new cell-based therapies for the treatment of childhood illnesses.

She added, "These questions range from how can we grow the cells in sufficient quantities to make their clinical use more feasible, what are the best methods to assess the safety of potential treatments, and how can we best monitor and track cells in the body," Tarantal said.

While stem cells hold great potential for treating a variety of health problems, researchers need to learn more about them, Tarantal says. To improve understanding of stem cell biology, the center will focus on three major research projects that will develop new methods to:

• co-culture stem and progenitor cells to increase the number of umbilical cord blood stem cells available for cell transplants;
• isolate and expand progenitor cells in the kidney as a potential cell therapy for urinary tract obstruction in children with kidney disease; and
• improve cell imaging that could be used for tracking transplanted stem cells in clinical studies.

These research projects are supported by four core services for administrative, cell and vector, non-human primate, and bioinformatics/biostatistics support.

Another important feature of the center is the pilot and feasibility program, which will provide opportunities for investigators nationwide to conduct research projects within the center and to form new collaborations. The center will also develop a mechanism for shared resources and databases, and expand educational programs with scientific seminars, workshops and an annual retreat.

"Our goal is to create an environment where cross- and multidisciplinary collaborations can flourish and lead to new cutting-edge technologies and therapies for diseases that affect children, from blood cell disorders to kidney disease," said Tarantal. "We are focused on discovery and bringing new findings from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside."

"Stem cells have the unique potential to revolutionize basic and clinical research that will result in entirely new medical treatments for a variety of diseases from cancer and Parkinson's disease to heart failure and spinal cord injuries," said Ann Bonham, executive associate dean for research and education at UC Davis School of Medicine.

She added, "Because stem cells can differentiate into cell types that perform highly specialized body functions — from white blood cells that fight infection to kidney cells that maintain the acid-base balance — they hold great promise for replacing diseased cells, tissues, and organs and can broaden our understanding of disease processes."

Other center partners include The Herman B. Wells Center for Pediatric Research at Indiana University School of Medicine, the University of British Columbia Children's Hospital, the University of Minnesota, and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

The National Stem Cell Bank, awarded to the WiCell Research Institute in Wisconsin, will consolidate many of the federally funded eligible human embryonic stem cell lines in one location, reduce the costs that researchers have to pay for the cells, and maintain quality control over the cells, the NIH said in a statement on Monday.

The WiCell Research Institute, a nonprofit set up in 1999 to support stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin, will store and distribute the cells under a federal plan to reduce their cost. In 2001, President Bush limited federal grant funding to projects involving 78 lines of embryonic stem cells that already were in existence, saying taxpayer dollars should not fund the destruction of human embryos. Only 22 lines are now available for use.

For details, see http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct2005/od-03.htm.