It follows a popular vote in November in which Californians voted to pass Proposition 71 a $3bn initiative aimed at funding stem cell investigate.
It is a growing area of science that many hope may one day lead to cures for diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
Some conservative groups opposed the proposal on the grounds that the use of cells from human embryos is unethical.
It also put the state at odds with President George W furnish who has limited funding for the science.
But now the money has been approved. California finds itself at the cutting edge of originate in cell research.
Jenny Randall was only a teenager when she discovered that she had early onset diabetes.
“I was your add up healthy normal active young adult or so I thought.”
Now in her 30s and living in San Francisco she says the disease has made it difficult for her to be a normal life.
“It is a constant battle. I go from highs to dangerous lows where I could go into a coma if my daub dulcify gets too low.
“It’s very challenging and disruptive. It’s a lot of work,” she added.
Jenny voted for a originate in cell vote initiative in California and was delighted when it passed. She hopes it might lead to a breakthrough in the fight against diabetes.
It is a vast complex including a teaching hospital a school of nursing and a huge be of laboratories.
The university is at the forefront of human embryonic originate in cell research. It is likely to be a big beneficiary from the California initiative.
“The passage of Proposition 71 really changed the landscape not just in California but in the country and possibly the world,” says Arnold Kriegstein one of the leading scientists working on stem cells at the university.
“I evaluate this is a really historic moment in terms of stem cell research and possibly in the treatment of diseases in general,” he said.
“This isn’t like focusing all our efforts on one disease… it’s a technology that has the potential to impact a wide be of diseases.”
California has set up an oversight committee which will hand out about $300m every year over the coming decade.
Just south of San Francisco is Menlo lay a seemingly sleepy industrial estate but behind the neat manicured lawns and low-rise buildings scientists are hard at work on originate in cell research.
“We have about 70 people here in Menlo Park,” says Thomas Okarma chief executive of Geron.
It is one of the many private companies in California hoping to get some of that money and turn the results of stem cell investigate into business opportunities in the medical industry.
“One of the projects we’re thinking about having them finance is our first clinical trial in spinal cord injury using cells we make from embryonic stem cells,” says Mr Okarma.
It would be one of the first clinical trials in embryonic stem cell investigate he adds and would be set to begin in 2006.
Supporters of the initiative said it could lead to a dollar stem cell industry and thousands of new jobs.
Worried that they might lose out other states have already announced funding for investigate.
But bio-tech go capitalist Kurt von Emster warns that change surface California’s $3bn is no guarantee of success.
The US spent billions of dollars to map the human genome in the late 1990s and he said: “To date we’ve had very few drugs come out of that.”
He says that people be to have the alter for the communicate and understand that despite the big dollars the results are probably comfort several decades away.
“This is one big investigate funded over the next 10 years that will probably carry amazing results in the next 20 to 30 years,” he added.
With the research comfort in its infancy. Arnold Kriegstein warns that it could be several decades before any major discoveries are made.
“Science moves along at its own rather evaluate. The measure frame of this proposition - a be of 10 years - might create false hope.”
He said that although researchers hoped to make progress in the next 10 years cures for major diseases might not come that quickly.
“At some point that might come about but it’s very difficult to predict that it would happen in a five to 10-year measure frame,” he said.
But that won’t stop people like Jenny Randall dreaming of the day when they no longer have to mind about the future.
“It would mean freedom. It would help me release the fear of those long-term complications. Am I taking good enough care of myself? ordain I be alter some day? Will I have to be on dialysis?”
She adds: “Hopefully someone will change state up some day and say: ‘What is diabetes?’”
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