Many biologists view stem cells as perhaps the most promising new development since the advent of genetic engineering. New research centers are being established at Stanford University and UCSF, spurred in part by a California law encouraging the sometimes controversial research.

Now, the Burnham Institute, an independent research center in La Jolla (San Diego County), is jumping into the mix, beginning a new stem cell initiative under the direction of Dr. Evan Snyder, a top stem cell expert at Harvard University.

Snyder was interviewed by Chronicle Science Writer Carl T. Hall during his move to the West Coast:

Q. Why leave Harvard?

A. The Burnham Institute decided to make a major assault on understanding stem cell biology. They call it a Manhattan Project for stem cells. So that was very appealing. They are going to be doing this by putting a lot of intellectual, fund-raising and administrative firepower behind it.

They also were interested in focusing on fundamental developmental biology behind stem cells. Not simply trying to put together, as one often sees in a trendy field, a place where you just play with stem cells, or put together a program purely for therapeutic reasons.

Q. And they gave you a beachfront chalet?

A. Well, I've always loved the San Diego area. And watching it from Boston, San Diego has really become a major stronghold of neuroscience research, genetic research and developmental biology, and also has become a real power in biotechnology as well.

Q. Are you bringing your entire lab with you, postdocs and all?

A. As many as I can pry loose from New England. It's still very much in the planning stages. The new state law has made California kind of a safe haven for stem cell research, so we are looking at whether we can take advantage of that to create a separate freestanding institute within the Burnham Institute.

Q. Would the purpose of that be to make it easier to do the sort of stem cell work -- deriving new cells from embryos, for instance -- that can't be financed with federal grants?

A. One wouldn't create an institute to circumvent federal law. The purpose would be to pursue the biology, beginning with mice stem cells, in an unfettered manner.

We are still at the level where we need the fundamental molecular understanding. Then we may get to the point where we are starting to understand certain processes, and we want to study human cells. So one would go to the present stem cell lines that exist, and they may turn out to be poor quality, or hard to work with, or don't support the hypothesis we know should be working. Any scientist would say, 'OK, let's go make a new line of stem cells.' The only problem is that in this field, unlike any other field in science, there's a government prohibition against science pursuing its natural course.

In a freestanding institute, scientists would be able to follow what the normal scientific reasoning process dictates: If we need to make new human embryonic cell lines, with various modifications, we'd be able to do that.

Q. How big a factor is the California legislation supporting stem cell research?

A. It carries an enormous amount of symbolism. It's a very important symbolic message that says the citizens of this state want good scientists to pursue this important biology, and figure out in an unfettered manner whether this is going to be important in medical science or not.

Q. Won't this continued discussion of a ban on therapeutic cloning at the federal level intrude on all this?

A. I guess theoretically it could, although in California, assuming you go out of your way not to commingle federal and private funds, then it shouldn't matter too much. I think it's very unlikely that it will be criminalized.

Q. There's a proposal for a five-year moratorium. Would you accept that as a suitable compromise?

A. That is so shortsighted and so silly. It would limit us only to the existing stem cell lines. It's like saying to George Bush: "You can attack Iraq, but only use the weapons your father had. Or even worse, why not just use stuff left over from the Vietnam War?" To penalize the American public like that would be criminal.

Q. Well, people feel very strongly about the creation of human embryos for the purpose of destroying them to make stem cell colonies.

A. That's really not what happens. It's a ball of cells that never have the potential to become a human being. Possibly, if implanted, it might be viable. But even in in vitro fertilization clinics, many embryos that are implanted do not take.

It would have to be within a reproductive system to be viable, which is not the intent and could never happen. These are simply stem cell preparations, really.

Q. England has made a big push into the stem cell field. Is it shaping up as England versus California?

A. That would make an interesting soccer match. . . . If you surveyed many different places around this country, or around the world in fact, you will find a lot of places saying, 'We are doing stem cells.' But the goals are really not well-defined. That is a prescription for failure, and it absolutely will fail.

Q. Why is it so important to work out all the fundamental biology before you can get to testing something in the clinic?

A. It's the most productive way to do it.

It's complicated. Even the dumbest stem cell is smarter than the smartest biologist.

In the nervous system, we are starting to find that stem cells have a way of homing in on areas that seem to be damaged, and once they are there, certain cues seem to direct some of the cells to become cells that have been lost.

Now, very new insights suggest other members of the stem cell group become support cells. We are learning these cells are just as important as the cells we thought we wanted, and in some ways even more important. They seem to exert an effect on the animal's own cells that may be threatened or degenerating or dysfunctional.

The repair is a matter of recapitulating development. It's a whole fabric of many different cells interacting with one another. We may be naive to think we can just replace one little aspect of that. We probably need to re-create the fabric.

The timing is the aspect that frustrates the public, and sometimes the press, and definitely investors. The time frame is very frustrating for somebody who's a capital investor and has a short attention span. You come out with a finding in January, and everybody wants to know why their uncle isn't walking by December.

Q. Does the Bush administration's policy, and the governmental financing restrictions, allow the field to move forward?

A. It's not so dire at this particular point because so much fundamental work needs to be done. Any scientists who say they have been paralyzed in their research because of the Bush administration is really being disingenuous.

There is so much fundamental work we still need to do before we even know if these edicts are restrictive or not.

I and many other people have been standing up for many years, saying stem cells are really a very promising new biology, a paradigm shift in approaching medical problems. Now it's our job to say, 'Here's the data. Here's the proof. Here's how we are delivering on our promise.' And we really haven't done that yet.