Stem-cell chairman takes on wider role

Board names Klein president, gives him authority to hire staff

Robert N. Klein, the Palo Alto developer and stem-cell advocate, took on the crucial day-to-day management duties Thursday for California's $3 billion stem-cell program.

Klein, who already was serving as chairman of the 29-member oversight board directing the voter-approved California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, was named by that board to be interim president of the institute with authority to hire staff and find office space.

State voters created the institute in November by passing Proposition 71, which authorized up to $350 million a year in taxpayer-financed bonds to pay for research projects and facilities during the next decade. The main purpose of the grants will be to promote embryonic stem-cell research that can't be financed by the federal government under rules adopted by the Bush administration.

Stem cells are the early, undifferentiated cells that eventually turn into the many specific cell types of the body. Biologists say the cells are invaluable research tools that might be fashioned into cures for diseases that can't otherwise be treated effectively. Religious and other...