UC Santa Barbara has been awarded $1,343,859 over three years to fund basic biological research in stem cells and to establish a graduate training program.

The campus is among the first 15 California institutions to receive grants from the new California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). “It’s very exciting to be part of the first wave of grantees,” said Dennis Clegg, chair of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology (MCDB) and principal investigator for the educational grant.

Two graduate students and four postdoctoral fellows will be funded over three years with part of the grant. New graduate courses in “Stem Cell Biology in Health and Disease” and “The Ethics of Human Embryo Research,” will also be developed as integral to the training. Some of the research will be carried out in the newly established Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology in the Neuroscience Research Institute, located in Biosciences II.

A few UCSB scientists are currently growing government-approved human stem cells in this lab. Participating CIRM researchers will come from MCDB, the College of Engineering, and the Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI).

“We’ll have a special interdisciplinary committee to oversee the ethics of the research,” said Ken Kosik, co-director of NRI and a MCDB professor. “No one among (the researchers) desires to clone humans.” Mice, worms, and sea squirts will constitute most of the research animals.

The long-term goal of UCSB’s program is to understand how human embryonic stem cells can transform themselves broadly into the vast variety of nerve cells present in the brain, said Kosik. In the beginning, every human cell has nearly the same basic building blocks of DNA, he explained. But turning on and off certain genetic switches determines if the cells grow into muscles, bone, skin or organs, like the eyes and brain.

The grant will support a variety of interdisciplinary studies of the basic biology of stem cells, including how these control switches work. “We know some of the controls, but not all of them,” said Kosik.

Martin Moskovits, dean of the Division of Mathematical, Life and Physical Sciences, called the grant “a strong statement that we are significant international players in the kind of biomedical research from which important new therapies for human disease will be developed.” He added, “We have already established important partnerships with companies and medical schools with whom we intend to pursue a vigorous research program.”

This award reflects UCSB’s interdisciplinary strengths in molecular biology, neurobiology, and bioengineering, said Clegg. “It will provide funding to train the next generation of scientists in this important area of research…”