The scripps research Institute, located in La Jolla, California (near San Diego), is a private, nonprofit research organization devoted to basic research in the biomedical sciences. Scripps is one of the largest private nonprofit research organizations in the United States and is among the world’s leading centers for research into the basic structure and design of biological molecules. Scripps is funded primarily by grants from U.S. federal agencies, and in particular from the National Institutes of Health, and it also derives income and support from collaborative partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. Over 270 professors, 800 postdoctoral fellows, 1,500 technicians and administrative support personnel, and 126 doctoral students (in the Kellogg School of Science and Technology) were working at Scripps in 2007. The doctoral program at Scripps was redefined in 2003 and is now called the Doctoral Program in Chemical and Biological Sciences, emphasizing its interdisciplinary nature. Students in the program select a curric-ular track in chemistry, chemical biology, biophysics, or biology. Scripps is governed by four officers and a 28-member board of trustees. In 2007, the president of Scripps was Richard A. Lerner, and the chairman of the board was John J. Moores.
The roots of Scripps date back to 1924, when the Scripps Metabolic Clinic was founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps.However, the direct precursor of the modern Scripps Research Institute dates to 1961, when a group of immu-nologists from the University of Pittsburgh joined together to form a research institution where they could work without the constraints of a traditional academic setting. In 1977, the research programs at Scripps were formally drawn together as the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, and in 1991, the research institute became a separate corporation under the parent organization Scripps Institutions of Medicine and Science. Today, Scripps emphasizes the pursuit of basic knowledge in the biosciences and the pursuit of fundamental scientific advances through interdisciplinary collaboration. Researchers are housed in 14 laboratory buildings, each of which is organized around a central area ringed by laboratories and offices, demonstrating Scripps’ emphasis on collaboration and crossing disciplinary boundaries.
In 2004, California passed Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative; this act created a state fund to support stem cell research, using monies raised from a bond issue, and created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to manage and allocate the funds. Availability of these funds spurred stem cell researchers in the San Diego area to begin discussions about forming an alliance to collaborate on their research and compete for this funding. On March 17, 2006, four major research institutions—Scripps, the Burn-ham Institute for Medical Research, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the University of California, San Diego—signed an agreement to establish a nonprofit entity to be called the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine (SDCRM). The purpose of SDCRM is to facilitate joint research and training programs among researchers at the four institutions and to establish a jointly operated stem cell research facility and pursue funding to support collaborative research. SDCRM has enjoyed outstanding initial success, and as of March 2007, researchers affiliated with SDCRM had received 29 research grants for stem cell research, totaling over $37.3 million.
A number of researchers at Scripps are engaged in research involving human stem cells. Kristin K. Baldwin, assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology and the Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases, studies the sense of smell and the neural systems that govern it in mice. In this research, she uses stem cell technology and mouse cloning to investigate the molecular mechanisms that govern neural circuit formation and function in mice, which may result in findings that will help illuminate the genetic bases of cognitive and behavioral disorders in humans.
Sheng Ding, Ph.D., associate professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Cell Biology, focuses his research on the development of chemical and genomic tools, which may be used to study stem cell biology and regeneration. Ding’s lab has developed large combinatorial chemical libraries and arrayed cDNA and RNAi libraries and high-throughput cellular screens that can be used to identify the small molecules and genes that control stem cell fate and signaling pathways. In 2003, Ding and colleagues discovered a small synthetic molecule, called reversinine, which can cause cells to dedifferentiate (i.e., to cause already differentiated cells to turn into precursor cells that are multipotent and can thus become other types of cells). This process would allow the creation of stem cells from an individual’s adult differentiated cells and would bypass some of the practical and ethical issues involved in working with human embryonic stem cells.
Peter Schultz, professor in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, is engaged in research projects that span the interface of biology, materials science, and chemistry. His research program, which involves about 40 students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff members, involves synthesizing new molecules with novel properties and studying their structure and function. Active projects include chemical and genomics studies of stem cell biology, oncogenesis, and neurodegenera-tion. Schultz works closely with Ding and is also institute director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego; he has founded several biopharmaceutical companies, including Kalypsys, the Affymax Research Institute, and Phenomics.
Martin Friedlander, Ph.D., professor of Cell Biology, studies vision, including how proteins are integrated into cell membranes and the role of integrins and integrin antagonists in ocular angiogenesis. In 2004, Friedlander and colleagues discovered that injecting adult stem cells derived from bone marrow into the back of the eye could be used to curtail retinal degeneration in mice, a finding that could be used to develop treatments for retinitis pigmentosa, a disease afflicting over 100,000 Americans for which there is no current treatment.
Scripps Health is a not-for-profit, community-based healthcare delivery network in San Diego that is affiliated with the Scripps Clinic. The Scripps Health network includes four acute-care hospitals, over 2,300 affiliated physicians, 11,000 employees, and numerous clinics and services for home healthcare and associated support. Several divisions of Scripps Health are involved in stem cell therapies and research. The Scripps Bone Marrow and Transplant Center was among the first to administer stem cell transplants (bone marrow transplants) in 1980 and remains a leader in this field, performing over 100 autologous (using the patient’s own stem cells) and allogeneic (using donated stem cells) transplants annually. The Heart, Lung, and Vascular Center, led by Richard Schatz, M.D., conducted the first-ever study investigating the possibility of using adult stem cells drawn from the patient’s own blood supply to treat severe chest pain for patients with inoperable coronary artery disease.
