Clone team
getting new quarters
at UH-Manoa

An Institute of Biogenesis Research
is born, thanks to a $6 million partnership
among public and private
agencies and groups

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

The University of Hawaii's famed mice-cloning "Team Yana" is getting a new home -- an Institute of Biogenesis Research.

It's being established through a $6 million public-private partnership formed by the state, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and the Kosasa Family Foundation.

Ryuzo Yanagimachi, professor of anatomy and reproductive biology, and his researchers were in Gov. Ben Cayetano's office today for presentation of a $1 million check from the Castle Foundation. The Kosasa Family Foundation also is giving the research group $75,000.

Yanagimachi said the funding will be a big help as his group struggles to attract other high-caliber faculty members and compete in the biogenesis research field.

"I feel like a captain with a big ship to race and not enough fuel and food for the crew," he said. It takes two to three years to gain momentum and "other ships have already started," he said.

Cayetano released $4.9 million in state funds for the new two-story, 15,000-square-foot institute, to be built next to the Biomedical Sciences Building on the Manoa Campus.

The researchers also will maintain their present quarters in the university's food services building.

Working in the crowded old facilities with a dying air-conditioning system, they have won international acclaim the past year for one discovery after another.

In July last year, the team announced that it had pioneered cloning of generations of female mice. They called it the "Honolulu Technique."

"Yana" earlier had developed a method to freeze-dry mouse sperm to fertilize eggs.

Assistant Professor Teruhiko Wakayama, who did key work on cloning of Cumulina, a female mouse, also led cloning of the first male mouse, Fibro, announced in June.

And Assistant Professor Tony Perry in May demonstrated a "Honolulu transgenesis" method to transfer genetic information, or DNA, from one animal to another. He used a "green gene" from a jellyfish to produce green mice.

Yanagimachi declined to cite the group's best discovery, saying, "The best one will be next."

Cayetano thanked the award-winning researcher for sticking it out at the university for 33 years in inadequate facilities. He said he hopes for further community and business support for the team's research "now that we know and realize the full potential of it."

UH President Kenneth Mortimer said the Castle gift is "significant far beyond the money on the table today." He predicted a "multiplier effect" leading to new companies and patents to boost Hawaii's economy.

Alluding to the recent controversy about the UH's accreditation status, Mortimer noted that UH for the third year is setting a record for research and training grants, expected to total about $160 million.

"Despite what everyone else is talking about," he said people at UH are working hard and making discoveries.

Yanagimachi said he feels lucky to be in Hawaii and to have the loyalty of his researchers, who have been wooed by other universities. He said he feels "like a samarai."

He said he can't offer other candidates for UH positions what some universities can but tells them, "Maybe I can guarantee them a Nobel Prize 10 years later...

"Please don't think we are just playing with mouse," he said. "We are thinking of future implications to medicine."

Yanagimachi said he'd like to change Hawaii's image from a sunshine state to an "intellectual society."

Mitchell D'Olier and John Baldwin, Castle Foundation directors, said they were impressed with Yanagimachi's desire to create "a new brand name" for Hawaii.

D'Olier, who sits on a University-Community Partnership Committee, said he heard Yanagimachi talk about the need to build Hawaii's reputation as a place for intelectual activity. "That struck a chord with me."

He went back to the foundation's trustees with the idea and they saw it as an opportunity to get together with other donors to leverage their contributions, he said. He said it's also a chance "to celebrate our successes in Hawaii and congratulate our stars."

Yanagimachi has been allocated five new faculty positions, which he's using to expand research units. Wakayama and Perry head two of them.

The scientists still are looking for grants and other funding to help support their work. Yanagimachi said an endowment fund is needed to stabilize the program and attract other researchers.

"I hope the guy who turned down my offer will regret it later," he said, with a big smile.

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