“They are seeing their senior
mentors spending more and more time writing grants and going hat in hand,”
Scadden said, in a phone interview. “That’s not a good way to inspire the best
and brightest.”
It is an empirical fact that
there’s now far less money going toward research science than there used to be,
due first and foremost to the decrease in government spending on such research.
The budget of the National Institutes of Health is lower (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) that at any point since 2000, and 22 percent lower than it was in
2003.
This has meant that the former
star students who chose to spend their lives in a lab, working with stem cells
or sequencing genomes, the kind of work that most experts believe will usher in
the next great medical revolution, are more reliant than ever on a handful of
Americans to fund basic research.
That source of funding, while
vital, is unstable and relatively scarce.
“We’re going to lose a
generation of young scientists, and that’s not something you can make up,” said
Dr. Laurie Glimcher, Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College.
Traditionally, researchers
rely on a three-legged stool for funding.
While one leg is made up of
government grants, another is made up of industry, which pays scientists to
research treatments that can be the next billion-dollar idea. But when it comes
to discovery science, whose outcomes are inherently unpredictable and which is
often conducted without targeting a specific disease, industry tends to be risk-averse.
That leaves philanthropy.
Fiona Murray, a professor of
entrepreneurship at M.I.T., published a paper in 2012 finding that
philanthropy, both private and corporate, provides almost 30 percent of the
annual research funds for leading universities. She also found that while
federal funds have been declining, philanthropic funds have been increasing.
“The role of science
philanthropy—gifts from wealthy individuals, grants from private foundations to
scientific research, and endowment income earmarked for research—is an
underappreciated aspect of philanthropy in higher education whose importance
becomes clear by examining trends in funding university research,” Murray
wrote. “Industry contributions (usually regarded as the alternative funding
stream for university research) amount to less than 6 percent of university
research funding. In striking contrast, science philanthropy makes up almost 30
percent of university research funding and has been growing at almost 5 percent
annually.”
It’s that funding that has
made possible a series of breakthroughs that could have outsize clinical
implications during the next few decades.
On the west side of harlem, in
an unadorned building, some of the most exciting research in medicine is taking
place, and almost all of it is being paid for by private donors.
The New York Stem Cell
Foundation is supported in part through the Druckenmiller Foundation.
The stem cell foundation’s fellowship program is the largest dedicated stem
cell fellowship program in the world, and they are one of the only two labs in
the country working successfully on a procedure known somatic cell nuclear
transfer.
Remember Dolly the sheep? It’s
that kind of science, but a bit further along, and instead of cloning mammals,
scientists work to create cells, organs or tissues that can replace diseased
cells in the human body.
The federal government, for
political and ethical reasons, won’t fund any of it.
Though President Obama
reversed the Bush administration’s position on funding stem cell research, no
new embryonic stem cell lines can be supported because of something called the
Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which is renewed every year and prohibits federal
funding for synthesizing new stem cell lines. (The Obama administration allows
N.I.H. funding for research on new lines that were created with private
dollars.)
“It’s really an illusion that
the government has both feet in,” said Susan Solomon, C.E.O. of New York’s Stem
Cell Foundation. “Without philanthropy we would not have a single stem cell
research program in this country.”
This past April, a team of
scientists from the foundation created the first disease-specific embryonic
stem cell line with two sets of chromosomes.
That means researchers were
able to create patient-specific stem cells from an adult human with type 1
diabetes that can give rise to the cells lost in the disease, according to Dr.
Dieter Egli, who led the research and conducted many of the experiments.
The stem cell experiments
began at Harvard and the skin biopsies were done at Columbia. But isolation of
the cell nuclei from these skin biopsies couldn’t be conducted in the federally
funded laboratories at Columbia, and Harvard scientists had to stop research in
2008 because restrictions in Massachusetts prevented them from obtaining human
eggs for research.
Stem cell science is one of
the most conspicuous areas of research in which philanthropy is being asked to
pick up the slack left by receding public investment. And in the specific case
of stem cell research, donors have stepped in to make up the lack of public
money.
But overall, money for
research is way down, reflecting a general aversion by both the public and
private sectors to fund medical-science projects without likely short-term
rewards.
“As resources have shrunk, the
ability to tolerate risk on bold ideas of course decreases,” Scadden said.
“There is an increased attention to ‘what’s the payoff, what’s the return on
investment? Can you show me a direct link to the way my constituents benefit?’”
The problem is that science,
generally speaking, doesn’t work like that. Telomeres, the tips of chromosomes
that protect DNA during cell replication, were discovered in the 1930s. No one
knew what they did or if they were of practical importance. Today, scientists
think they might hold the key to battling tumor development.
“Today’s medical miracles are
yesterday’s wild ideas in a basic laboratory,” Scadden said.
Donations to stem cell work
aren’t much different in that respect from the $12.5 million donation by former
Microsoft C.T.O. Nathan Myhrvold for a telescope that will search for
extraterrestrial life. Scientists haven’t found any yet, and may never, but
that shouldn’t be the point.
“While it’s impossible to
predict exactly what we will find with a new scientific instrument, we should
remember that interesting science is not just about the likelihood of end
results—it is also about the serendipity that occurs along the way,” Myhrvold
said in 2000 when donating the money.
Last year, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science began a coalition of funders that
aims to double philanthropic support for basic science over the next five
years.
“The concern of this group is
that there is such a big push on the translation science at the expense of the
discovery science, which is essentially feed-corn,” said Vicki Chandler, chief
program officer for science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in
California, one of several foundations that joined the coalition. “And if we
keep heading [toward] that balance there may not be as many as great things to
translate from in the next decade.”
Despite the changing
proportions of money for research, the United States government remains the
principal lifeline for science. The N.I.H. budget is just under $30 billion,
much of which is invested in research grants. Private funding for basic
research, the kind that doesn’t attach itself to a specific disease or
therapy—is only somewhere between $2 and $4 billion.
The question is how far or
fast the balance between public and private funding is shifting, and where it
will end.
The more it shifts, the more
research scientists are coming to rely on a select few donors, who can drive
the agenda.
T. Denny Sanford, for example,
donated $100 million last year to the creation of the Sanford Stem Cell
Clinical Center at the University of California, San Diego.
“I believe we’re on the cusp
of turning years of hard-earned knowledge into actual treatments for real
people in need,” Sanford said last November. “I want this gift to push that
reality faster and farther.”
In 2012, Mort Zuckerman
pledged $200 million for the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior
Institute at Columbia University.
The Ansary Stem Cell Institute
at Weill Cornell exists because of $15 million donation from Shahla and Hushang
Ansary, the major Republican donor and former Iranian diplomat.
But Murray, the M.I.T.
professor, found these examples are more exception than rule. Her research
found “little support” for the notion that philanthropists fill gaps left by
federal funding.
“In addition,” she wrote, “few
philanthropists appear to seek to identify such gaps. This fact is underscored
by one key fact about philanthropy: philanthropists are more concentrated in
their giving to specific (translational) fields than the government, suggesting
that with few exceptions … patrons add support to already well-funded wealthy
fields instead of filling gaps.”
That’s frustrating, Glimcher
said, because scientific research seems so close to potentially important
breakthroughs on so many medically significant fronts.
Given new tools for genetic
sequencing and a better understanding of chemistry, basic discoveries can yield
clinical trials faster than ever before. But not if that basic science isn’t
funded.
“It’s frustrating right now
because we are at a time when we can translate basic discoveries into new
therapies for patients,” Glimcher said. “Philanthropic research can be a
temporary stop-gap and a wonderful addition to reduce the sting of cuts in
government funding, and it can top off government funding, but it’s never going
to replace government.”
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