As an alternative to contributions for research some may consider investments for research. StemCells, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEM) is a candidate for consideration. If you have others send them to me for posting. --Jerry 30Jan01
By Aaron Page Staff writer, eCountries. 30Jan01

Investment Candidate

A professor and researcher at the Salk Institute in California, Fred Gage is at the forefront of one of the most promising areas of medical and scientific research: gene therapy, using stem cell technology. He is also trying to turn his discoveries into patents and profits for his publicly traded research company.

Fred Gage's fifteen minutes of fame - at least, his first - came two years ago. As the lead author of a ground breaking article in Science Magazine, he dutifully made the rounds of news programs and talk shows, dryly explaining that a fundamental tenet of neuroscience - the belief that adult brain cells cannot be created or repaired - was in fact quite wrong. The study removed many barriers in neuroscience research, creating, virtually overnight, the field of central nervous system (CNS) gene therapy.

Gage is now a leader in that field, consistently one of its most original thinkers and productive researchers. At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California (the institute that houses, among others, co-discoverer of DNA Dr. Francis Crick, and frequent Davos panelist Dr. Walter Eckhart), Gage studies degeneration and regeneration in the adult central nervous system, with an eye on possible future treatments for everything from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases, to leukemia and lymphoma, to physical brain damage resulting from strokes or injury.

Neural regeneration depends on the presence and activity of stem cells - "undifferentiated" cells able to develop into almost any type of cell depending on factors that scientists are only just beginning to uncover. Gage's big idea this year is that "the phenomenon of neurogenesis is regulated by environmental influences, and likely, by behavior." That is, neural regeneration increases along with levels of exercise and mental stimulation (at least in mice). That's an idea that should give us all pause - though of course it is still being tested and refined.

In addition to substantive research, Dr. Gage has helped to define new forms in the practice of scientific research, forms revolving around private funding and free market competition. In 1988 he co-founded (along with Irving Weissman, a professor at Stanford University, who will also be at Davos this year) StemCells, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEM - news), a small, publicly-traded company "engaged in the discovery and commercialization of stem cells to treat diseases of the central nervous system, liver and pancreas." Like many ambitious technology companies still developing their products, StemCells has taken a beating recently on the markets, dropping about 90% of its share price. But a recent study demonstrating the researchers' ability to transplant regenerative human brain cells into mice - something long promised, but only now proven - has boosted the outlook considerably.