Throughout my career as a physician and scientist, I’ve seen ideas once considered impossible become breakthroughs that save lives. They happened because talented scientists had the resources, institutions, and sustained support to pursue ambitious ideas. Most importantly, they knew patients could not afford to wait.
Today, we are at another extraordinary moment. Immunotherapies are already successfully preventing, curing and treating cancers that were previously considered death sentences. The potential of immunology breakthroughs to treat and cure even more diseases is increasingly within reach.
But just as science is accelerating, the federal funding needed to sustain it is becoming more uncertain. Those of us who work in medical research know what that uncertainty means. Promising work slows. Research teams lose momentum. Young scientists look elsewhere. And discoveries that might reach patients take far longer or are eliminated altogether.
That is why I am supporting Proposition 38, the Immunology Medical Research and Cures Initiative on California’s ballot this November. The $8.4 billion bond represents the opportunity to make a long-term investment at precisely the moment when a field with proven lifesaving power is poised to do much more.
Prop 38 represents an historic new approach to funding medical research. It would invest $8.4 billion in immunology research, with half supporting competitive grants across dozens of California’s universities and nonprofit research institutions advancing immunology and related research.
The other half of Proposition 38 funding will support a world-class nonprofit immunology research institute affiliated with the University of California with access to leading scientists, technology, laboratory equipment, patients and clinical trials necessary to scale and quickly turn research into life-saving cures. The California Department of Public Health will determine the eligible institute based on the measure’s strict criteria to ensure a highly qualified research institute is selected based on rigid accountability requirements.
The potential of immunology breakthroughs to treat and cure even more diseases is increasingly within reach.
Prop 38 requires collaboration among grantees so discoveries, expertise and best practices are shared across institutions rather than siloed.
Ultimately, Prop 38 is designed to create something California has never had before: a permanent, collaborative research ecosystem that combines broad competitive funding with a world-class institute capable of fostering collaboration to accelerate discoveries into lifesaving treatments for patients.
For scientists, one of the most important features of Prop 38 is its long-term vision. We know that transformative research cannot be turned on and off with each funding cycle. It takes years to build exceptional teams, develop new approaches and move a discovery from the lab to the patient.
Prop 38 offers California the chance to create a more durable ecosystem for that work. A portion of the licensing revenues generated by successful discoveries would flow back to the state and, once the bonds are repaid, into further immunology research. In other words, the breakthroughs we make today can help provide the resources for scientists to pursue the breakthroughs of tomorrow.
At a moment when states everywhere are searching for new ways to support science, California can be a model the rest of the country can follow: ambitious public investment, rigorous scientific competition, collaboration among leading institutions and leaders and a mechanism to reinvest the returns from discovery into the next generation of research.
For those of us who have spent our lives treating patients and pursuing scientific discovery, opportunities of this scale do not come along often. We already know that immunology can change the course of devastating diseases, it’s a proven approach. And we can see the potential for it to do far more. The question is whether we will build the scientific infrastructure and provide the sustained support necessary to realize that potential.
I hope my fellow physicians, scientists and researchers throughout California will join me in supporting Prop 38. This is more than another research program. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate discoveries, strengthen California’s scientific community and bring new treatments and cures to patients who cannot afford to wait.
Arie S. Belldegrun is an urologic oncologist, professor of urology, and founding director of the UCLA Institute of Urologic Oncology. Belldegrun also serves as co-chairman of Breakthrough Properties, which is helping develop laboratory space for the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy.
