Connecticut has distributed nearly $80 million in stem cell research grants but only two private companies received funding in the program’s seven years, with most of the money going to the University of Connecticut Health Center and Yale University.
In 2011 Chondgrogenics received $1.3 million and this year ImStem received $1.1 million, but they are the only companies to receive state money. Both companies are based in Farmington and emerged out of UConn.
Yale researchers received nearly half of the grant money, $35.7 million. Yale’s endowment – worth $19.3 billion – generates that much money for the university every two weeks.
The UConn Health Center received more than a third of the funding, or about $29.5 million. Researchers at the Storrs campus and Wesleyan University also received state money.
Only $2.4 million or 3 percent of the money went to private companies. The state offered a $900,000 grant to a third private company in 2008, but the company failed to meet certain criteria and never received the money.
As of 2011, the program had funded 151 jobs at Yale, 40 at UConn and seven at Wesleyan.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell started the plan to fund stem cell research with state money in 2006 with a plan to spend $100 million over the next decade. After a $20 million initial infusion from the state budget, money from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies would supply $10 million a year going forward.
Rell’s successor, Dannel Malloy, altered the plan. He plans to use the $10 million in tobacco money to balance the budget and instead borrowed money to pay for stem cell research.