New Gifts to Stem Cell Program Push University of Colorado Denver to Near Completion of Challenge Funding
Contact: Tonya Ewers, 303.724.1524, pager: 303.266.0941, tonya.ewers@uchsc.edu
Funding for new pediatric research among new additions to program
AURORA, Colo. (Nov. 30, 2007) – New funding gifts and the announcement of a new pediatric stem cell program mark important milestones today in the Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Biology Program at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. The program was first established 15 months ago following a $6 million gift from the Gates Frontiers Fund. To date, many of the short-term goals set for its first two years have been met. These include the formation of a 21-member, primary investigator research team within the program, a near fulfillment of the $1.75 million needed for a matching funds challenge to expand programs in cancer, cardiology and Parkinson’s disease, and the establishment of two target cores within the program.
This morning, Chancellor M. Roy Wilson, MD, MS, and Dennis Roop, PhD, director of the Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Biology Program, and the University of Colorado Foundation officially dedicated the program and the new stem cell lab on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
New Funding for Stem Cell Research Program
At the dedication event, The Children’s Hospital announced a $5 million gift from the Gates Frontiers Fund that will allow the Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Biology Program at the UC Denver School of Medicine to expand its stem cell research program to include pediatrics. In addition, Roop announced more than $1.5 million has been raised toward the $1.75 million goal for the matching funds challenge set by the Gates Frontiers Fund – part of the arrangement made with their original gift to establish the program in August 2006.
The $6 million commitment to the School of Medicine for the establishment of the Program was comprised of $2.5 million for an endowed chair, $1.75 million for specialized laboratory equipment, and an additional $1.75 million in the form of a challenge grant to fund portions of up to seven discipline-specific programs. The specialties included heart/congestive heart failure; liver disease; vascular disease; neurological diseases/Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s; type 1 diabetes; blood diseases/leukemia, and cancer.
Establishment of Two Cores of the Program
One of the most highly utilized techniques in the study of stem cell biology is flow cytometric analysis and cell sorting. The Gates Frontiers Fund supported the purchase of two state-of-the-art flow cytometers for the Program establishing the Flow Cytometry Core. These instruments, one an analysis machine and the other a cell sorter, provide the latest analysis and sorting technologies available.
“The flow cytometer is a frequently used instrument in stem cell biology,” said Chris Hogan, PhD, associate director of the Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Biology Program. “These machines can analyze 70,000 cells per second. Stem cells are essentially a needle in a haystack – only one in 10,000 cells are considered stem cells – and the cytometer isolates them and ‘plucks’ them out of the crowd.”
In addition to the Flow Core, the Transgenic and Gene Targeting Core has also been established as part of the Program. This core facility replaces the Transgenic/Knockout Core that was originally part of the University of Colorado Cancer Center on campus. The goal is to assist primary research investigators in the design and generation of genetically engineered mouse lines to further biomedical research.
Recruitment of Researchers
Dr. Roop was recruited from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, to be the first Chair for the Program at UC Denver. When he began his position in January 2007, he brought five National Institutes of Health grants with him to totaling $3.8 million and also recruited three researchers from his team at Baylor. Those researchers are: Neil Box, PhD, assistant professor, dermatology; Peter J. Koch, PhD, associate professor, dermatology; and Maranke Koster, PhD, associate professor, dermatology; all with the UC Denver School of Medicine.
Roop was one of the first investigators to begin using molecular techniques to study how the skin forms during normal embryonic development. He identified many of the genes required for normal skin development and discovered that defects in some of these genes cause inherited skin diseases. Roop has recently shown that epidermal stem cells are defective in inherited skin diseases. His team’s current research efforts are focused on developing methods to isolate and correct defective epidermal stem cells so that they could eventually be grafted onto patients with inherited skin diseases. Roop has also made major contributions in understanding the genetic defects that lead to the development of skin cancer. He is currently focused on isolating and characterizing cancer stem cells.
Additional recruitments of well-known stem cell researchers are currently underway in areas such as Parkinson’s disease, head and neck cancer, cardiology, juvenile diabetes, and pediatrics, to name a few.
The Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Biology Program is open to all investigators within the University of Colorado system who are interested in stem cell research. The goal of the program is to understand the biology of stem cells in order to develop new therapies for debilitating diseases such as cancer, pediatric diseases, heart diseases, juvenile diabetes, vascular diseases, liver diseases, blood diseases, and neuronal diseases.
For more information about embryonic and adult stem cells, please visit: stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.asp. For more information about the program at the UC Denver School of Medicine, visit: www.uchsc.edu/stemcell/index.htm.
The School of Medicine faculty work to advance science and improve care as the physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Denver Health Medical Center, National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The School is part of the University of Colorado Denver, one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. For more information, visit the Web site at www.uchsc.edu or the UC Denver Newsroom at www.uchsc.edu/news.