Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative

Since 2005, The Starr Foundation has dedicated $150 million to establishing and funding collaborative, pioneering stem cell research through the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative (Tri-SCI), which is a program that includes Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Rockefeller University, and Weill Cornell Medicine.

Tri-SCI enables scientists to work across institutional and disciplinary boundaries to advance and apply knowledge of stem cells to treat a vast array of daunting diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, vascular disorders, and diabetes.

The Initiative fills a critical gap by supporting promising research for which government funding is unavailable, either because the project has not yet reached the proof-of-concept stage required for federal funding or because of legal restrictions governing most human embryonic stem cell research. For example, a Tri-SCI–funded project helped scientists develop a Parkinson’s disease stem cell line using somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is a type of research that is not currently supported by the National Institutes of Health.

The Tri-SCI collaboration also overcomes the barrier to entry for individual institutions to undertake stem cell research, which requires expensive equipment and technology. By funding different collaborative core facilities at each Tri-SCI campus, The Starr Foundation helps researchers make faster and more cost-efficient biomedical breakthroughs. The Starr Foundation Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Derivation Laboratory, for instance, is a shared laboratory on the Weill Cornell Medicine campus where researchers from all three Tri-SCI institutions can access technologies to investigate pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into all the cell types of an adult body.

Some of the significant stem cell discoveries achieved with The Starr Foundation funding include:

• Weill Cornell scientists have grown human blood stem cells from cells that line blood vessels. This breakthrough can turn a single stem cell, destined to become a blood vessel, into blood, with the potential to treat diseases such as malignant and genetic blood disorders.
• Weill Cornell scientists, using embryonic stem cells, found that fragile X syndrome, a common cause of mental retardation and autism, happens when the gene responsible for the disease is shut off—and that a drug that blocks this silencing mechanism can prevent fragile X, which is a discovery that may hold the key to treating many other diseases.
• Memorial Sloan Kettering and Weill Cornell scientists have grown stem cells into dopamine-producing neurons to treat Parkinson’s disease. This work has led to the first in-patient clinical trial in patients with Parkinson’s.
• The Rockefeller University scientists have modeled Huntington’s disease in embryonic stem cells and are testing drugs that may delay or block degenerative processes. Memorial Sloan Kettering scientists are adapting this technology to Parkinson’s disease research.