A third of US principal investigators studying stem cells were planning to move laboratories within four years, according to a survey conducted in 2005 and 2006 (ref. 1). What's more, in a world connected by airplanes and e-mail, stem cell scientists still rank the quality of their collaborator network most highly when choosing a location for their laboratories. That priority was closely followed by the quality of facilities. State funding for stem cell research ranked fourth out of the eight factors considered.

But that doesn't mean that state policies don't influence how stem cell scientists choose a particular state, writes Aaron Levine, who researches public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In 2001, President George W. Bush declared that federal funding could only be used for human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines derived before August 2001. Since then, several states have made their own funding available for the research. Some have adopted policies that explicitly permit or restrict various practices in using or making human ES cells.

To find out how policies affected scientists' choices, Levine conducted Web surveys of one group of stem cell scientists and one composed of other biomedical scientists, asking whether they were planning to relocate and what factors would influence that decision. He also asked scientists to rank the top states in their disciplines.

Both groups ranked California, Massachusetts and New York as the top three, but there were marked differences between the groups. Nearly 90% of stem cell scientists ranked California as one of the top three states for their field compared with about half of the non stem cell scientists. More than 90% of stem cell scientists were aware of the state's efforts to support the research. Similarly, 15% of stem cell scientists ranked New Jersey in the top states compared with 4% of the other scientists, and 59% of stem cell scientists said they knew of that state's efforts. The differences for these states and for Massachusetts were statistically significant. For New York, in contrast, about 20% of scientists in both groups ranked the state as one of the top three in the nation, and only 29% of stem cell scientists were aware of the state's efforts.

Though the data don't show whether scientists actually move, the survey reveals that scientists are paying attention to state policies and support, says James Fossett of the State University of New York in Albany, who studies state stem cell policies. “You can bet your bottom dollar that anyone who's been doing anything related to stem cells is bringing this to the attention of the relevant dean.” Fossett says this “competitive dynamic” is unlikely to change after the presidential election, particularly with stem cell funding flat.

Factors Influencing Stem Cell Scientists' Decisions to Move Note: Vertical bars (left axis) show the average ranking (1 - 10 scale) for each of eight factors, and triangles (right axis) show the percentage of respondents who indicated that a specific factor was the single most important factor influencing their potential decision. N = 321 (197 principal investigators, 124 postdoctoral researchers/graduate students). Credit: Reproduced with permission from Public Administration Review 68, 689 (2008)

Levine writes that state policies could build momentum. “States that lose scientists early on may have a harder time recruiting in the future, while states that gain scientists may, as long as more positions exist, have a relatively easier time.”

The Web-based survey included responses from more than 300 stem cell scientists, nearly 200 of whom described themselves as principal investigators. It compared these responses with more than 900 responses from scientists who said they did no work with stem cells.

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