UPDATED: OCT. 5 at 10:50 p.m.

A Syracuse University trustee and his wife recently donated $1 million to establish a stem cell research lab in the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute.

The donation was made by Samuel Nappi, an SU Trustee, and his wife, Carol, to put toward stem cell research and the construction of the lab. One of the main scientists involved in the project is Zhen Ma, an assistant professor in SU’s biomedical and chemical engineering program and a Samuel and Carol Nappi Research Scholar.

Ma has only been at SU for four months, but he spent seven years studying stem cells and completed part of his research at the University of California, Berkeley.

The assistant professor said he is particularly interested in how stem cells can be used to combat heart disease. This form of medicine is called regenerative medicine because it focuses on methods to regenerate or repair damaged heart tissue. While it currently focuses on tissues, Ma said he hopes that in the future, the same technology can be used to repair organs and limbs.

In addition, Ma is researching organ chip technology, which uses microdevices to study drug responses in organs that can then be used to learn about genetic defects.

He said the money donated will be used to establish a stem cell program and research center, which will also serve as working space for faculty.

A space for a lab in Bowne Hall has already been reserved for Ma, but he plans on using some of the money from the donation to purchase equipment. The lab space will be shared with one other Ph.D. student and multiple undergraduate interns.

He said he wants to bring in others as well, so there will be opportunities for students to work with Ma — particularly for those who are studying biomedical engineering.

The students will specifically be working on computational models to figure out how cells can organize to form specific types of tissues. They will also be trying to develop an algorithm to track cardiac arrhythmia, or improper beating of the heart.

Ma has been collaborating with the Gladstone Institutes to get stem cell samples and he said he hopes to continue the partnership. He added that there has been discussion about teaming up with the State University of New York Upstate Medical School’s Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

Radhakrishna Sureshkumar, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, said this is important because the medical school is working to create a facility to harvest stem cells.

Stem cells generally incite controversy, but Sureshkumar said the stem cells used for research are induced stem cells not embryonic ones, which he said alleviates any ethical issues. The difference is that induced pluripotent stem cells are adult cells generally derived from somatic cells and then transformed, he said. Somatic cells make up internal organs, skin and connective tissue. The stem cells are not taken from embryos.

The idea behind these stem cells is that one can “use the body’s power to heal itself,” Sureshkumar said.

“I consider myself a bridge between the biology medical department and the engineering school,” Ma said.

This isn’t the first time Nappi has worked with SU. He has put $1.5 million toward the biomedical and chemical engineering program, of that amount $500,000 was put toward funding the first phase of a collaborative research program, according to SU News.

Matt Wheeler, the communications manager for the College of Engineering and Computer Science, said garnering public funds for scientific research, such as those from the government, is extremely competitive. For that reason, he said it’s important for researchers to look towards private foundations for grants and donations.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the standing of Gladstone Institutes was misstated. Gladstone Institutes is an independent research organization and does not belong to the University of California, San Francisco. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on September 27, 2016 at 10:36 pm

Contact Sandhya: ssiyer@syr.edu