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Buck hoping to have first stem-cell facility

NOVATO – The Buck Institute for Age Research hopes to be the first of a dozen new stem-cell centers to come online in the wake of a $20.5 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM.

“Being the first will be an important factor” in raising the remaining $20.5 million to build the $41 million facility, said Buck President and COO James Kovach, M.D.

“Philanthropists and funding groups will want to be associated with it, and other CIRM-funded groups that haven’t yet built their facilities will be able to use it,” he said.

The institute for regenerative medicine stands behind the Buck, which at just 10 years old is among the youngest institutions to receive a portion of the total $271 million in funding announced Wednesday.

“We recognize that young institutes like the Buck do not have the resources of our older, larger grantees,” said Robert Klein, chairman of the CIRM governing board. “I, along with some of my colleagues, have made a personal commitment to help the Buck succeed in raising funds to establish this new Center of Excellence,” one of only two such designated facilities.

The Buck grant was the sixth largest of the 12 made by CIRM.

When the master planners of the Buck Institute for Age Research plotted the future of the hilltop campus they had no idea that the research facility would be swept up into an entire new industry, but the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine grants have proved the wisdom of their forethought.

With the $20.5 million toward building the Buck’s second laboratory as a CIRM Center of Excellence and another $4.1 million to develop a shared learning facility and training center for growing stem-cell colonies, the Buck is becoming the multi-building center of science and research that its founders envisioned.

“This latest grant validates their goal,” said Buck Vice President of Facilities and Planning Ralph O’Rear. The new 65,708-square-foot building will be the third of five buildings planned for the campus and already permitted by Novato. Also planned for and permitted are 130 housing units, which will be needed as stem-cell technicians and scientists flood the facility.

Proposition 71 passed by voters in 2004 mandated the spending of $3 billion on stem-cell research in California and gave special priority to institutions that could build facilities within two years of breaking ground. The fact that land and permits for such a building were already in place at the Buck was a factor in its being awarded the $20.5 million.

“That and the quality of our science got us to the table, despite the fact that we’re a relatively young institute without the deep pockets of the universities and larger institutes,” said Mr. O’Rear.

Mr. O’Rear is hoping that funds might also be available to build housing planned for the Buck site, although there was no provision in the stem-cell proposition for housing.

“Quite frankly, the technicians and scientists who will be doing research and attending stem-cell training are not paid on a par with people in private industries, so housing is daunting. We’ll be pursuing both traditional and non-traditional funding for the housing,” he said.

The stem-cell facility will be a perfect complement to and extension of the research on the conditions and diseases of aging that is currently being carried out at the Buck.

“Much of that research involves neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and those are conditions where stem-cell research looks the most hopeful,” said Mr. O’Rear.

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