The $1 million in state funds Governor Eliot Spitzer announced last week will help the UR further its goal to become a leader in the emerging field of stem-cell science.

The UR will open The Stem Cell Institute in early February, says Dr. Bradford Berk, C.E.O. of the UR Medical Center.

"We will invest $20 million over the next five years in the people and resources necessary to be the leaders in stem-cell biology and regenerative medicine," Berk says. "Our number-one goal is to have the first treatment for people. I think, optimistically, we can achieve that in the next two to three years."

The UR award is one of $14.5 million in grants from the Empire State Stem Cell Board, which state lawmakers created last year to oversee research and funding. Spitzer and the State Legislature approved funding for stem-cell research in the 2007-2008 budget, and have committed to a $600-million investment over the next decade. The UR, Cornell, Columbia, and Mount Sinai Medical Center each received $1 million from the state this year.

Stem-cell research could have a major economic impact on New York, which is second only to California in the amount of funding it's committing to the field. More than 40 scientists at the UR are involved in some form of stem-cell research through $70 million in grants. The program employs more than 260 people. And the UR's Stem Cell Institute, Berk says, "will attract 20 more of the best scientists in the world to Rochester" during the next two years.

"This is going to be very important to Rochester," Berk says. "Stem-cell research and regenerative medicine will be an interdisciplinary field that draws specialists from all areas of medicine. We think it has the potential to make the Rochester region one of the largest biomedical communities in the country."

Stem cells are among the most promising discoveries in medical science due to their regenerative abilities. They could, in theory, be manipulated to create new bone, tissue, and eventual treatments for a long list of diseases. The state funding is necessary, says Craig Jordan, an associate professor with the UR, because the National Institute of Health (NIH) has provided little support for research that uses embryonic stem cells. Unlike stem cells taken from adults, embryonic stem cells can be regenerated into any type of cell in the body. A skin cell, for instance, can become a brain cell. Researchers at the UR are studying both adult and embryonic stem cells.

The state funding, Jordan says, "will be less restrictive, and would allow for embryonic research not funded by the NIH under the current administration."

 Jordan is one of 17 UR researchers who will share the $1 million grant. The UR, he says, is focusing its research on four main areas - neurological disease, cancer, bone and skeletal repair, and cardiovascular disease.

Jordan has been working on a treatment for leukemia and is preparing to test a drug in clinical trials that targets the stem cells believed to cause the disease.

"People usually think of stem cells as the good guys," says Jordan. "When a stem cell becomes genetically damaged, it can begin replenishing itself as cancer cells. That's the dark side to stem cells. We used to think that by removing a cancerous tumor, we eliminated 99 percent of the cancer. But now we believe that leaving that stem cell is analogous to leaving the root of the weed. We have to knock out all of the stem cells to prevent the disease from returning."