Thomas Siebel lives part-time in Montana, known for its rugged beauty, big sky, fly-fishing, and, in recent years, for a growing methamphetamine problem.
Rather than sit back and ignore the issue, Siebel did something about it. In 2005 he launched and supported an aggressive advertising campaign aimed at 12- to 17-year-olds that saturated the airwaves and print media. The result — the Montana Meth Project — has been a series of visceral portrayals of real-life meth addicts that rely on shock impact. By 2007, teen meth use had declined across the state by 45 percent and adult meth use by 70 percent. Based on these results, other states are following Montana’s lead and adopting similar strategies.
This kind of direct, sometimes unconventional, approach is at the core of Siebel’s philanthropic vision. Now the foundation established by him and his wife, Stacey Siebel, has set its sights on the promise of stem cell research. And it’s found UC Berkeley and its cross-bay rival, Stanford University, to be ideal research partners, rather than competitors, in the quest for solutions to devastating diseases.
With gifts from the Siebel Foundation totaling $10.5 million, the schools have established the Siebel Stem Cell Institute, to be led by Robert Tjian at Berkeley and Irving Weissman at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Adding a $1.5-million match from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Distinguished Chair in Stem Cell Research at Berkeley, the commitment from all these gifts totals $12 million.
The new institute takes two top schools — traditionally viewed as competitors, at least on the gridiron — and fosters a synergistic relationship built on the strengths of each around stem cell research. The new consortium will bring together the top physician-scientists, biologists, chemists, engineers, and computer scientists to target the root causes of today’s most devastating diseases and translate discoveries into new therapies.
The collaboration between Berkeley and Stanford promises to build on the broad strengths of each institution in the arduous journey from foundational research to practical applications.
At Berkeley, for example, scientists are investigating molecular mechanisms that regulate gene expression and differentiation of stem cells into specialized tissues such as skeletal muscle and cells of the immune system. This pioneering work is being conducted through the coordinated efforts of biologists, bioengineers, and chemists. Meanwhile, at Stanford’s School of Medicine, scientists are leaders in research on blood-forming stem cells, embryonic stem cells, and cancer stem cells. One of Stanford’s strengths is translating basic science into clinically useful solutions.
Weissman, director of the Stanford Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute, envisions that the Siebel gift will support the kind of interactive collaboration that is needed to speed advances in the field.
“If you could find a way to get a nanoparticle into a cancer stem cell, you could track its movement in the body,” says Weissman, the Virginia & D. K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research at Stanford. “This is the kind of exciting collaboration that can now take place.”
The gift from the Siebel Foundation provides the “all-important key to bring our scientists together in exciting, more synergistic ways,” said Tjian, who is director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, a UC Berkeley professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He called the gift an “exciting and catalyzing event” that promotes not only collaboration but creates a formidable magnet to attract top international scholars.
