ALAMEDA, CA—In a move credited to California’s stem cell initiative, a biotechnology company has moved its headquarters from Massachusetts to this city, bringing with it a dozen jobs to a burgeoning biotech cluster on the island.
Advanced Cell Technology, which applies stem cell technology to regenerative medicine—technologies that repair or replace diseased or defective tissues or organs—will hold an official announcement about the move today at its new 15,000-square-foot facility on Harbor Bay Parkway.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity for Alameda and the Bay Area,” said Eric Fonspein, who works in the city’s Development Services Department. “It reasserts our global leadership in (the) life-science industry.”
The company moved from Worcester, Mass., to tap the resources that could be made available through the Proposition 71 stem cell funding measure. But Advanced Cell’s relocation to the East Bay comes at a time when two lawsuits have imperiled the future of embryonic stem cell research. The lawsuits seek to scrap the law that created the California Institute of Regenerative Research. Prop. 71 empowered the institute to bestow $3 billion in research grants related to stem cell technology.
Bill Caldwell, CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, however, said he believes Prop. 71 stands a good chance to remain largely intact despite the litigation lodged against it.
“Ordinarily, litigation against initiatives does not preclude most of these propositions from going into effect and proceeding with what the voters authorized,” Caldwell said. “And in the case of Prop. 71, I understand that the judge in this case has set the bar pretty high for the plaintiffs to overturn the stem cell proposition.”
What’s more, Advanced Cell has not arrived in California expecting to harvest funds from the proposition.
“Our business plan does not depend on actual money coming in from Prop. 71,” Caldwell said. “But we hope we can collaborate with some of the research institutions to make progress in areas where we lack resources.”
The opening of the facility comes as no surprise to Fonspein, who said Alameda has a strong biotechnology community and that Harbor Bay Business Park is becoming a “nest of biotech research” with companies such as Avigen, Henssin Corp., TheraSense Inc. and Abbott Diabetes Care.
“They’re doing good work. All these companies aim to improve the quality of life. The fact that Prop. 71 was passed also shows there’s a lot of community support,” Fonspein said.
Caldwell, who quips about living on an airplane between his home in Los Angeles, meetings in New York and the company’s Massachusetts headquarters, said the decision to open a headquarters and laboratory in Alameda wasn’t difficult.
He’s excited about the location because it’s close to the airport. “I can literally ride a bike if I had to,” which helps the company recruit employees from outside the state. “This is a much more palatable opportunity for them” and has more of a home environment, Caldwell said.
The nest of companies also provides a ready-made community for the company to explore and share ideas.
What Caldwell says separates his company from others doing similar work is that in 2000 it created an ethics advisory board, chaired by Ronald Green of Dartmouth University, to prevent situations such as the one with a recently disgraced South Korean scientist, much of whose work was found to be fraudulent.
“You find that people that are very passionate about the treatment of disease and how the treatments evolve,” Caldwell said. “Any time you’re dealing with human tissue, there will be concerns from various sectors about how that information is being collected.”
The areas of research that Advanced Cell Technology focuses on are the eye and macular degeneration, the identification of blood vessels important for reconstituting heart muscle that could be used to attack tumors or cancer, and creating dermatological products for burns and lesions that are caused by disease. Caldwell says he hopes that the technology will continue to address the healing process and the scarring issue.
He cites progress in bone marrow research and companies that for the past 18 years have worked in the area of adult stem cells where cures are in clinical trials.
“We believe we are the next generation. Our learning curve is a lot quicker, taking advantage of what the companies before us learned.”
The grand opening and tour of the facility at 1201 Harbor Bay Parkway will be held at 11 a.m. today, with interviews by appointment. For details go to: www.advancedcell.com
Contra Costa Times
Kara Andrade and George Avalos
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