CGS-authored
SAN FRANCISCO -- California voters, wooed by an aggressive, multimillion dollar campaign that promised cures to myriad diseases, overwhelmingly approved the nation's most ambitious stem cell research center two years ago.
Now, $181 million is set to flow to cash-starved scientists struggling in a field financially and politically hamstrung by Bush admin- istration opposition and lawsuits filed by conservative organizations against the center.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine managed to push out $14 million in ''training grants'' for young researchers last year, but much of the money it doles out in 2007 will finally go to senior scientists eager to push stem cell research out of the lab and into patients.
When the committee that runs the center meets to adopt a 10-year scientific plan Thursday it is expected to acknowledge that routine, widespread stem-cell treatments are unlikely to arise within a decade.
From laboratory to patients ''Our aspirational goal is to cure disease,'' said Zach Hall, the institute's president and top scientist. ''But you can't snap your fingers and have that done.''
The most ambitious goal of the...