Moving Back from Melbourne to San Diego. (January 20, 2006)

    Science reports the following:

Stem Cell Gold. The lure of California has proven irresistible for two U.S.-born stem cell scientists now based in Australia.

Martin Para - Credit: Gillian Para /USXC Health Sci.

 

Next month, biologist Martin Pera is leaving Monash University and the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) in Melbourne, where he headed embryonic stem cell research, to become director of the new Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. A colleague, geneticist and patent law expert Dianna DeVore, has resigned as ASCC chief operating officer to participate in an as-yet-undisclosed commercial venture in San Diego to bring stem cell technologies, many developed in Australia, from the lab to the clinic.

 

Dianna DeVore Credit ASCC

Pera and DeVore say they were drawn by the rosy funding outlook for stem cell science in California, where the state plans to spend US$295 million annually on the field over the next 10 years. By contrast, the Australian government has given ASCC--the nation's flagship stem cell enterprise--a total of US$55 million through 2011. California also offers a flexible regulatory framework that permits somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technology currently outlawed in Australia.