Alzheimer's Club

"Dr. Ira B. Black, a neuroscientist and brain researcher who became an early advocate for stem cell research and a founder of the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 64.

The cause was an infection related to a tumor, his family said.

Dr. Black argued forcefully that medicine would gain from laboratory research involving stem cells taken from tissue and human embryos. He said the cells derived from embryos, while controversial, could constitute "the gold standard" in repairing damaged nerve cells and developing therapies to treat Alzheimer's disease, cancer and other ailments.

When, in 2004, New Jersey became the second state, after California, to adopt legislation approving stem cell research, Dr. Black was appointed the first director of the state-financed Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey. He was also chairman of the department of neuroscience and cell biology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Dr. Black's own research involved investigations of neurons and brain function as well as the origins of neurons, the nerve cells found throughout the body. In 2000, Dr. Black and others reported that they had succeeded in forming cells similar to neurons from stem cells taken from the bone marrow of humans and rats. The experiment did not use cells derived from embryos, whose destruction in other types of stem cell research has angered abortion opponents.

The scientists added an antioxidant and watched the cells change into cells with the appearance and properties of neurons. Dr. Black recalled the discovery: "Over the course literally of minutes, the cells converted from rather pedestrian, flat, undistinguished stem cells into typical neuron-looking cells."

"We were disbelieving," he added.

Perry B. Molinoff, vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania, said that Dr. Black's results, published in The Journal of Neuroscience Research, were "an incredible achievement," in part because they hinted at the mechanism that allows stem cells to differentiate into cells intended for the brain, blood, liver and other organs.

Dr. Molinoff continued, "It was a finding of enormous importance because it spoke to a core question of Ira Black's work, which is uncovering the potential to treat diseases for which there are at present no therapies."

Dr. Black and others later transplanted the newly formed cells into the spinal cords and brains of laboratory rats and found that both the cells and the rats survived without ill effects.

The finding underscored his argument that stem cells could possibly act as a vehicle to introduce gene therapy or be employed to rally the body's existing stem cells.

As an administrator, Dr. Black expressed impatience with the scarcity of public financing for stem cell research and the seeming cross-purposes of federal and state legislation intended to control or encourage it. This month, New Jersey legislators decided to postpone proposals that would have provided about $600 million in state sponsorship for stem cell research.

"We hope we'll get patients out of bed and out of wheelchairs," he said in an interview in July, "and that's one of the reasons it's particularly frustrating to have a federal stance that inhibits this progress."

Ira Barrie Black was born in the Bronx. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and earned an undergraduate degree from Columbia. In 1965, he received his medical degree from Harvard.

From 1975 to 1990, Dr. Black was director of the division of developmental neurology at Cornell. He was the author of "The Changing Brain: Alzheimer's Disease and Advances in Neuroscience" (2002) and "Information in the Brain: A Molecular Perspective" (1991).

He was president of the Society for Neuroscience in 1992.

Dr. Black's marriage to Janet Linquist Black ended in divorce in 1999. He lived in Skillman, N.J., and Andes, N.Y.

He is also survived by a son, Reed, and by his fiancée, Janet Davis, both of Skillman."

Source: Jeremy Pearce. Dr. Ira B. Black, 64, Leader in New Jersey Stem Cell Effort, Dies. New York Times: NY Region (12 January 2006) [FullText]