Harvard plans center for disease research

Harvard University plans to launch a sweeping effort today to cure a wide range of debilitating ailments, from diabetes to spinal cord injuries, using stem cells.

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute will bring together nearly 100 researchers from the university, including scientists, specialists from seven local teaching hospitals, and researchers at the schools of law, business, divinity, and government.

The institute, the launch of which is being marked by a scientific conference today, will rely on private money and will include an aggressive push to use human embryonic stem cells, an area in which the Bush administration has sharply limited federal funding.

The plans, first reported by the Globe in February, are part of a broad push by Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers to rethink the university's approach to the sciences, especially the life sciences, and encourage scientists to cooperate across the traditional boundaries of their fields.

The institute does not have a headquarters but will eventually build new facilities. One intriguing possibility, the scientists said, is to place the institute in Allston, where Harvard is planning to build a major new campus.

Scientists said the institute has a fund-raising goal of about $100 million, Fund-raising is going well, said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, Harvard's provost, though he declined to say how much money has been raised so far.

The institute will focus on five types of disease: diabetes, heart disease, musculoskeletal diseases such as muscular dystrophy, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, and blood and immune diseases such as leukemia and AIDS.

Stem cells are naturally occurring cells that have the ability to transform into other kinds of cells. By studying them, scientists hope to understand better how diseases unfold in the body and, eventually, cure them. But research on the most flexible type of stem cell, called the embryonic stem cell, is highly controversial because it is only possible if researchers first destroy an embryo several days after conception.

The federal government will fund research only on embryonic stem cells created before Aug. 9, 2001. The institute will pay for research in this area using private money. The institute will have co-directors: Dr. David T. Scadden, director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Regenerative Medicine and Technology, and Harvard biologist Douglas Melton, whose work gets support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com.