Students at the campus of the University of California in San Diego. (Photo: Kapi Ng, via Shutterstock)About 17,000 graduate student researchers calling themselves Student Researchers United (SRU) at 10 University of California campuses are seeking to form a union with the United Auto Workers, a campaign that began in early 2020. UC management is not wholly on board with this move of unrepresented employees.
Close up of laboratory microscope with DNA gel background image. (Photo: 18percentgrey, via Shutterstock)Directors of the California stem cell agency last week handed out $2 million a minute to nearly 20 organizations during an online meeting that spread the largess from Sacramento in the north to San Diego in the south.
The Lorry I. Loke Stem Cell Research Building at Stanford University. (Photo: CIRM)California’s taxpayer-financed stem cell agency will give away $98 million later this week, but the agency’s full, 35-member board is not going to have much to do with making decisions about who gets what. That’s because 17 members of the governing board are barred from voting on applications for any of its research awards, which will ultimately total roughly $5 billion over the next decade or so.
Susan Talamantes Eggman is congratulated in the Assembly following passage of her right-to-die measure. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)Susan Talamantes Eggman was raised in Turlock, where her family owned a small almond orchard and apiary (bee-keeping), and her first job that wasn’t on the family farm started her on a path to working in health care and mental health throughout her life.
Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro’s medical team gathers around her on the day she received her gene-therapy stem-cell transplant. (Photo: Padilla-Vaccaro family, via UCLA Health)A London-based biotech firm has given up its life-saving treatment for the bubble baby disease and turned it over to California’s $12 billion stem cell agency and UCLA, where it was developed with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.
A medical technician prepares to draw blood from a patient. (Photo: Ruchuda Boonplien, via Shutterstock)OPINION: The worry of a mother for her child never ends. I am the sole caretaker of my adult daughter who suffers from multiple rare diseases. Her conditions hold her from living independently. During her 35 years of life and her 12 years of living with her chronic conditions, I cannot remember the many times that she almost died.
Evangelina, a former 'bubble baby,' plays inside a giant plastic bubble. (Photo: Stem Cellar Report, CIRM)Little Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro is more than a poster girl for the $12 billion California stem cell agency. She embodies a big bet by the agency that its efforts will conquer at least a few of the terrible diseases that are currently incurable. In the case of Evie, as the eight-year-old is known, she was born with what has come to be described as the bubble baby syndrome, a rare genetic mutation that crippled her immune system to the point that she would have died if left untreated.
A stem cell researcher at UC Davis. (Photo: AJ Cheline, UC Davis, via The Stem Cellar)Backed by $17 million in cash from California’s stem cell agency, researchers at UC Davis this month are launching “the world’s first clinical trial using stem cells to treat spina bifida before the child is born.”
A liquid nitrogen bank containing a suspension of stem cells. (Photo: Elena Pavlovich, via Shutterstock)OPINION: The Golden State boasts the 5th largest economy, the biggest and best public university systems and, thanks to support from California voters, it’s the global epicenter for advancing stem cell research and treatments for chronic diseases and conditions that will afflict nearly all California families.
The state Capitol in Sacramento, home of the Legislature. (Photo: SchnepfDesign, via Shutterstock))In the California Legislature, all types of legislative measures (bills, resolutions and constitutional amendments), as well amendments to those measures, can only be introduced or processed if they are in “Legislative Counsel form.” The purpose is to ensure greater consistency in California’s statutes. The nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Counsel serves as legal counsel and bill drafters to California legislators and the governor.