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Stem cell forum hitting Madison

Hundreds of leading researchers, policy advocates and investors will gather in Madison this September for the World Stem Cell Summit, Gov. Jim Doyle announced Wednesday.

Doyle, a longtime advocate of stem cell research, called Madison its “birthplace.”

This year marks one decade since the University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson’s first major research achievement — isolating human embryonic stem cells — and the more recent breakthrough in deriving stem cells from skin cells last November.

“That was a tremendous breakthrough, of course, and certainly it increased my interest in bringing the conference here,” said conference organizer Bernie Siegel, founder and executive director of the Genetics Policy Institute.

The summit will be an opportunity for the state to demonstrate its leadership in working to turn research into life-saving treatments, Doyle said.

“Obviously the University of Wisconsin-Madison, now the leading public research university in the country, is at the center of much of this groundbreaking research,” he added.

Siegel, a researcher and policy advocate, said a “pro-cures” movement in the United States supports stem cell research, and the movement is more akin to a consumer movement than a political one.

“You go to the ordinary person in the street, you ask them if they support stem cell research, 70 percent or more will say yes,” Siegel said. “It’s not because it’s a public health issue. It is for them a personal health issue.”

Stem cells are capable of becoming any one of the 220 types of cells in the body.

Siegel said in 20 years, stem cells would be used not just to understand the root causes of disease, but as a tool for drug therapy, and could even eventually be a replacement for surgery.

Deb Archer, president and CEO of the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau, a group involved in hosting the summit, said her group was thrilled the convention would help raise UW’s notoriety.

“In our business, people often think that it’s the impact, economically, of conventions, but it’s really the altruistic nature, that conventions bring the thinking, thoughtful people together that change the world,” Archer said. “We are so excited this convention is coming here.”

Clive Svendsen, co-director of UW Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, said the summit would be “one of the most exciting meetings, we think, in the history of stem cells.”

“The center wants to push the envelope further,” Svendsen said. “We’re going to provide the expertise needed to take these amazing discoveries through the real clinical trials in the future.”

Siegel also said Wisconsin faced tough competition from New York and Washington, D.C., to host the summit. He credited Doyle’s keynote at a similar 2006 conference at Stanford for drawing him to Wisconsin.

“He is the stem cell governor of the stem cell state,” Siegel said.

According to Svendsen, the synergy and cooperation between state government and scientific research necessary to support the summit could only happen in Wisconsin, under the Wisconsin Idea.

Siegel expects 800 to 1,000 participants in the summit, which will take place at the Alliant Energy Center Sept. 22-23.