The meeting was almost over when Roman Reed steered his wheelchair to the microphone.
On the table before him sat a 149-page book of budget charts and timetables, the first concrete outline of what California's voter-approved stem cell institute plans to accomplish in its 10-year lifespan.
"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart," Reed said to the institute's staff and 29-member oversight board in October. "I promised my son that one day I would be able to walk, stand next to him and go hold my wife's hand. And seeing this road map to cures, I know that this will come true."
The room at Los Angeles' Luxe Hotel thundered with applause for the Fremont resident, who broke his neck while playing college football in 1994.
Despite the enthusiasm of Reed and his audience, the book offered no promise of a cure for his paralysis.
Two years after California voters authorized $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research, the institute created to oversee the enterprise has just begun what experts see as a long and slow scientific journey. Even with the $150-million state loan approved recently to kick-start work stalled by legal challenges, there are no breakthroughs in sight. Gone are the allusions to healing such afflictions as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases that dominated the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71. In fact, scientists say, there is no guarantee of cures -- certainly not any time soon -- from the measure that was optimistically titled the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act.
Set for final approval at UC Irvine this week, the draft plan is clear: "It is unlikely that [the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine] will be able to fully develop stem cell therapy for routine clinical use during the 10 years of the plan."
Instead, the top goal is to establish, in principle, that a therapy developed from human embryonic stem cells can "restore function for at least one disease."
That would be only the first step toward persuading pharmaceutical or biotech companies to fund expanded clinical trials, a process that takes years and millions of dollars. Fewer than 20% of potential therapies that enter trials make it to market.
In addition, the institute hopes to have treatments for two to four more diseases in development within the decade.
