State of research

If Massachusetts puts big bucks into biomedical research, where should the money go?

Massachusetts life scientists may have different ideas about how to spend the $1 billion of Governor Deval Patrick’s proposed Life Sciences Initiative, but most seem to agree on two points:

Scientific merit and funding need should drive the selection process.
Stem-cell research should be given priority.

Filling gaps or taking new paths?

Illustration: James Yang

The legislature will set guidelines, but making the tough decisions on funding specific research ultimately will be the job of an expanded Massachusetts Life Science Center committee. The committee will face scrutiny and pressure from anti-stem-cell-research activists, anti-tax crusaders and a host of pleading research hospitals and academic institutions.

To avoid conflicts of interest in doling out research grants, scientists call for a merit-based formula. “I strongly support a peer-review process with study sections much like those of the National Institutes of Health,” says MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer, who won this year’s National Medal of Science for his cancer drug delivery research.

The governor has stated that some grants would support proposals that receive high NIH scores but don’t receive funding. “Bridging NIH gap funding is really important, and it helps to avoid politics because the applications are already peer-reviewed,” says Joan Brugge, chair of Harvard Medical School’s department of cell biology. “A lot of us have been denied grants that received superb scores, so we spend half our time looking for resources.”

Phillip Sharp, MIT Institute Professor and Nobel laureate, agrees with the governor’s plan to focus funding on shared projects that could be widely beneficial. “It should be focused,” he says. “If you spread it too far it won’t have an impact.”

Yet Sharp says it’s also important to support cutting-edge research. “I’d rather see it invested in new initiatives rather than fill gaps in funding,” he says, mentioning neurobiology and biofuels as two promising areas.

For her part, Brugge recommends systems biology, tissue modeling and engineering-based research.

Centralizing innovation

The initiative also calls for setting up “innovation centers” to streamline technology transfer and funding. Once again, biologists may differ on this approach.

Brugge likes the idea. “There’s a need for core services that encourage collaboration,” she says.

Yet Tariq Rana, director of chemical biology at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical School in Worcester, worries that such a focus could ignore cash-starved innovators. “Let scientific needs guide these collaborations rather than forcing people to collaborate,” Rana says. “Innovations come from investigator-initiated ideas.”

Banking on stem cells

As it currently stands, the initiative would use bonds to build the nation’s first centralized human embryonic stem cell (hESC) repository. This facility would store and share hESC lines developed by Massachusetts scientists.

A major question facing the legislature is whether such stem-cell projects should be given priority for biomedical research funds.

Like most of the scientists contacted for this story, Whitehead Member Robert Weinberg thinks so. “We should invest in projects that are impossible without this money and that have the greatest multiplier effect,” he says. “Stem cells hold enormous promise for all kinds of biomedical research.”

But Weinberg is skeptical that an hESC repository is the best investment: “Historically, such banks haven’t had much of an impact.”

“State funding for hESC research would be very important, especially given the current anemic level of federal support,” emphasizes Willy Lensch, a Harvard Medical School instructor who works with hESC lines at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

Critical mass at UMass

The governor’s first two bond recommendations—the hESC repository and an RNAi Therapeutics Center that’s already under way—are both UMass Medical projects.

Patrick also proposed upgrading life sciences research and educational facilities throughout the UMass system and providing it with workforce training funds.

Scientists generally support the UMass educational investments. “It’s appropriate to spend taxpayer money at the state university,” says Sharp. “The first business of the state is to maintain an educated work-pool. If those needs are met, other things will follow.”

“It’s about time to invest in public life-sciences education,” says Rana, who formed Worcester-based RXi Pharmaceuticals with 2006 Nobel laureate Craig Mello and Michael Czech, another UMass scientist. “It’s essential to serve students and communities of all economic and social backgrounds.”

“It’s people who make the biggest difference,” says Weinberg. “We need state-supported training programs at the bachelor’s level. These are the people who actually get the work done.”

But he questions whether the state is reinventing the wheel in advanced research. “The money shouldn’t all go to rich institutions, but UMass may not be prepared to profitably infuse the funds,” he says.

Better living through biology

While they agree on the need for the state to remain competitive, researchers also emphasize the huge potential for biomedical research to save and improve lives.

“It’s good that the state is providing funds for life sciences,” says Langer. “It’s not just about the economy. It’s about our children’s health and our own.”