The Lightning Rod Robert Lanza C’78 M’83 has racked up a slew of scientific accolades—and generated an equal amount of controversy—for his pioneering work on cloning and stem cells. And then there’s the private island stocked with dinosaur fossils, the Good Will Hunting comparisons … and his “theory of everything.” BY MOLLY PETRILLA ixteen miles outside Boston, in the back corner of an professionally, whose moms actually let them inside the house unfinished basement, a teenage boy lowers his syringe for more than just meals and sleep, whose parents probably to a chicken egg and takes aim. speak to them, maybe even take them to museums. SIt’s 1969 and this is Robert Lanza’s first time experimenting His best friend’s mom laughed when Lanza told her he want- with embryos. He isn’t yet a well-known scientist. He hasn’t ed to become a doctor. “You’d probably make a very good car- achieved all those cloning and stem-cell firsts, hasn’t been called penter,” she said. When Lanza announced his plan for the school genius, renegade, or quack. He doesn’t have to worry about being science fair—he would alter a chicken’s genetics and turn it killed on his way to work. Journalists haven’t come up with the from white to black—his classmates giggled and his teacher “real-life Good Will Hunting” analogy or suggested that he open said it was impossible. It’s a word he’ll hear many times. his own Jurassic Park. He hasn’t worked with B.F. Skinner and Down in the basement, wedged between the furnace and Jonas Salk, hasn’t told off the former dean of Penn’s medical clothes dryer, a homemade Styrofoam incubator on the table school. He doesn’t have a private 10-acre island and a house in front of him, he’s decided the chicken experiment is chal- filled with dinosaur bones. That will all come later. Today he’s lenging, but not impossible. He talked his way into syringes still just a kid, and he wants to win the school science fair. and penicillin at local hospitals and borrowed tabletop cen- A small 13-year-old who could easily pass for 9 or 10, Lanza trifuges from a guy across town who works for the state health has been tossed into the lowest-track classes his whole life. agency. His neighbor drove him to local farms so he could His older sister dropped out of high school in the 10th grade gather eggs from white chickens and black ones. Now he’s and the other two, younger than Lanza, will eventually do the been working in the furnace room for months, trying to intro- same. He fought his way into an honors biology class this duce pigmented genes into white embryos while his mom year—his freshman year of high school—which means he’s stands in the kitchen telling her friends that “Robby is down- sitting beside those A-track kids whose dads don’t play poker stairs trying to hatch chicken eggs.” Not quite, Mom, he thinks. 46 SEPT | OCT 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPH BY JARED LEEDS THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2014 47 Eventually several white chicks will himself. According to Lanza, stem cells Gearhart sees this retinal trial as an emerge from their eggs with brown spots. had saved the man’s sight. “We’re not important test case for the field. “Can Lanza will drop by Harvard Medical School supposed to use the term miracle patient,” you do stem-cell grafts? Will you have a to get help repeating the results, and in a Lanza says, “but …” good outcome as far as restoring func- scene straight out of the movies, he’ll mis- The cells came from Advanced Cell tion? We’d love to get that information,” take the founder of Harvard’s neurobiology Technology (ACT), a biotechnology firm in he adds. “I have often felt very strongly department for a janitor. Stephen Kuffler, Marlborough, Massachusetts. Lanza has that the eye was one of the best places “the father of modern neuroscience,” won’t been the company’s chief scientific officer to begin, so I think Bob’s head was mind a bit. He’ll introduce Lanza to a grad- for 15 years, and he tells this anecdote from screwed on right here.” uate student who will later become director the ongoing, ACT-led clinical trial with “The field, at least the translational of Harvard’s Center for Brain Science, and pride. He considers it proof that the ideas part of the field, is looking at that trial who will spend hours chatting with the he’s been championing for more than a with a lot of interest,” adds Christopher eager teen about his chicken project. decade are valid—that scientists can create Scott, a bioethicist at Stanford. “We’re Lanza will win the school science fair stem cells and use them to treat, or maybe all still waiting for a study to come out after his neighbor, Barbara O’Donnell, even cure, diseases in humans. of the clinic that validates the use of cells coaches him on the presentation, even He says his company is the only one in derived from embryonic stem cells.” teaching him to speak in complete sen- FDA-approved clinical trials using embry- tences—something he’s never done before. onic stem cells—cells that are pluripotent, Lanza joined ACT in 1999—just two years On the night he wins first place, Lanza meaning they are able to divide and become after scientists announced that they’d will run up to her, a sad look on his face, almost any type of cell in the body—to fight cloned Dolly the sheep. Advanced Cell was and say: “Well, there’s nothing else left. human diseases. ACT has been tracking an animal-cloning company back then, What else is there to do in life? This is it.” and treating adults with macular degen- and before he arrived Lanza had been Five years and several science-fair wins eration and children with Stargardt’s working for a biotechnology firm nearby, later, in December 1974—Lanza’s freshman macular dystrophy for three years now. trying to reverse diabetes in dogs through year at Penn—an article will appear on page Lanza claims the trial has recorded mul- cell transplantation. The cells were reject- 597 of the science journal Nature with the tiple improvements and, so far, no ill ed over and over. As the news about Dolly title “Alteration of melanocytes by DNA in effects. In 2012, ACT reported in The Lancet and then John Gearhart’s stem-cell isola- White Plymouth Rock chickens” up top and scientific journal that a woman who could tion broke, Lanza began to wonder if cell Robert P. Lanza as the sole author at the end. detect only hand motion had begun read- cloning might be the solution for those The chicken experiment will become a frac- ing letters on a visual acuity chart after transplant rejections. “I thought there tion of his oeuvre—an output that now treatment. Lanza also mentions partici- was great human potential,” he adds, “but includes hundreds of scientific publications, pants who can now read their watches or at the time it was very, very controversial. more than 30 books, and a parade of “top” go shopping alone or recognize colors. Embryonic stem cell was almost synony- and “most” titles: Top Stem Cell Influencers, “This trial is giving us hope that pluripo- mous with murder.” Most Inspiring People in the Life-Sciences tent stem-cell therapies are safe and that He pressed on with the work, helping Industry, and most recently, Time magazine’s we can actually use these new methods to ACT clone the first human embryo in 2001— 100 Most Influential People for 2014. really help people,” he says in his pro- and sparking a major panic about human Robby, the scrawny kid from Stoughton, nounced Boston accent—the source, along clones as a result. (Gearhart cites that Massachusetts, will become Bob Lanza— with his rough upbringing and the Harvard/ announcement as his biggest gripe with one of the most prominent and contro- Kuffler story, of numerous comparisons to ACT, while bioethicist Art Caplan lam- versial figures in his field. Good Will Hunting, the 1997 film about a basted it as “a major setback for rational young math genius who works as a janitor discussion of the ethics of stem cell at MIT. He and ACT are planning the next research and cloning.”) The cloned-embryo 75-year-old man, a horse trial phase now. “We could be treating very panic overlapped with a new right-to-life The rancher from Kansas, could large numbers of patients within a few debate that was also disrupting the fledg- barely see. Macular degeneration had years, easily, if it all goes well,” he adds. ling stem-cell community. In a nationally faded his sight in one eye to 20/400 by the To some critics, Lanza may glide too televised speech in August 2001, President time he enrolled in a clinical trial. Doctors quickly over that if. John Gearhart, the George W. Bush restricted federal funding injected retinal pigment epithelium cells, James W. Effron University Professor and for research on embryonic stem cells, cit- made in a lab from embryonic stem cells, director of Penn’s Institute for Regenerative ing his belief that “human life is a sacred into his bad eye. One month after treat- Medicine—who at Johns Hopkins University gift from our creator.” ment, he was no longer legally blind.