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Cutting the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund by nearly 80 percent would mean "effectively stopping the program," according to the chair of the commission that oversees it.

A Maryland senate subcommittee voted Friday to cut the $23 million that Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed for the fund in fiscal 2009 to $5 million.

The cut would mean the program could award just a handful of scientific grants in 2009, according to Linda Powers, chair of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund Commission.

"And who knows what happens after that?" she said.

Even restoring the fund to $15 million - the same amount as its first year, fiscal 2007 - would be welcome in comparison, Powers said.

"If they decreased it a little bit, maybe we could live with that," agreed Jennie C. Hunter-Cevera, board chair of the Maryland Technology Development Corp., or TEDCO, which administers the fund, and president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.

Members of the Senate Subcommittee on Health, Education & Human Resources, part of the Budget and Taxation Committee, cut the fund as they tried to...