Our goal at the stem cell agency is simple; to accelerate the development of successful therapies to patients with unmet medical needs. But on the way to doing that something interesting is happening; we’re helping advance the scientific understanding of stem cells and building a robust stem cell research community in California in the process.

You don’t have to take our word for it. A new paper in the journal Cell Stem Cell takes a look at the impact that state funding for stem cell research has had on scientific publications. The question the researchers posed was; have the states that fund stem cell research seen an increase in their share of scientific publications in the field? The answer, at least in California’s case, is absolutely yes.

Let’s back up a little. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the field of stem cell research was considered quite controversial, particularly when it came to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). To help scientists get around some of the restrictions that were placed on the use of federal funds to do hESC research a number of states voted to provide their own funding for this work. This research focuses on four of the biggest supporters of this work: California, Connecticut, Maryland, and New York.

The researchers looked at the following factors:

1. The percentage of scientific publications in the U.S.
2. With at least one author from those four states.
3. That focused on hESCs and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
4. Comparing the numbers from before the state funding kicked in to after.

Finally – stay with me here, we’re almost done – they compared those numbers to the number of publications for two other areas of non-controversial biomedical research, RNAi and cancer. For California the results were clear. The percentage of papers on RNAi and cancer from 1996 – 2013, that had at least one California author, stayed fairly consistent (between 15-18%). However, the percentage of papers on hESCs and iPSCS with a California author rose from zero in 1998 and 2006 (the year each was discovered) to a high of 45 percent in 2009. That has since dropped down a little but still remains consistently high.

The article says the reason for this is really rather obvious: “that state funding programs appear to have contributed to over-performance in the field.”

“After the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) issued its first grants in April 2006, the share of articles acknowledging California funding increased rapidly. Between 2010 and 2013, approximately 55% of hESC-related articles published with at least one California author acknowledged state funding, suggesting that this funding program played an important role as California maintained and built upon its early leadership in the field.”

Connecticut also saw its share of publications rise, though not as dramatically as California. Maryland and New York, in contrast, saw their share of publications remain consistent. However, as the researchers point out, with California gobbling up so much more of the available space in these journals, the fact that both states kept their share consistent was an achievement in itself.

The researchers acknowledge that scientific publications are “only one measure of the impact of state science programs” and say it’s important we look at other measures as well – such as how many clinical trials arise from that research. Nonetheless they conclude by saying:

“This analysis illustrating the relative performance of states in the production of stem-cell-related research publications provides a useful starting point for policymakers and, potentially, voters considering the future of state stem cell funding efforts as well as others interested in state science and technology policy more generally.”