Science Breakthroughs The Koyal Group InfoMag News: Discovery Science Powered, Increasingly, by Donors - 1 views
started by Jason Zhen on 15 Jul 14
started by Jason Zhen on 15 Jul 14
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"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.)
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