Posts Tagged: Stem cell agency

News

Rare stem cell success gives young girl life outside the bubble

Sheersha Sulack and Donald Kohn (with glasses) earlier this year on the day she received a cell treatment.

One year ago this month, five-year-old Sheersha Sulack asked Santa to bring her a suitcase to carry her toys with her for an arduous treatment that her parents hoped would save her from a rare, life-threatening affliction known as the bubble baby disease. Development of the therapy is part of a unique effort that has put the Golden State at the forefront of the development of gene and cell therapies.

News

CA stem cell program CEO abruptly resigns

Maria T. Millan CIRM photo

The chief executive officer of California’s $12 billion stem cell and gene therapy program, Maria T. Millan, resigned abruptly this week, leaving what is the largest such state research effort in the nation without even an interim leader. Millan’s departure comes as the agency faces major challenges. They include expansion of an embryonic effort to assure the affordability of CIRM’s potential treatments that could cost millions of dollars. Some of the directors are also behind a move to sharpen its focus and reset its priorities.

News

California researchers vie for millions in stem cell dollars

Photo by ANDREI ASKIRKA via Shutterstock

Nine California research organizations will vie behind closed doors this week as the state’s stem cell agency scores their bids to kick off what would be a first-in-the-nation, $80 million manufacturing network to speed the development of revolutionary medical therapies.

News

Stem cell: $137 million buys more clinical trials, shared labs, research

A laboratory scientist uses a pipette to manipulate stem cells. (Photo: Vshivkova, via Sutterstock)

It was a $137 million day for the Golden State’s stem cell agency — no small event even for an enterprise that is backed by billions. The scientific scope covered by the $137 million was impressive. It ranged from bolstering the vaunted Alpha Clinic Network initiated around the state by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), as the agency is legally known, to raising the number of CIRM’s clinical trials to 83. 

News

Stem cell agency lists own board members with conflicts of interest

A stem cell researcher at UC Davis. (Photo: UC Davis Stem Cell Program.)

In a first in its 18-year history, the California stem cell agency has begun posting on its website a list of its governing board members who have conflicts of interest as they award hundreds of millions of dollars. The most recent example comes next Tuesday in a $48 million round that will benefit at least 16 public and private colleges in the Golden State and up to 400 students at a cost of $58,220 each.

News

California-backed cure for ‘bubble baby’ disease stalls — again

A pipette drops stem cell research fluid on a special container. (Photo: CI Photos, via Shutterstock)

The “bubble babies” saga and a California-financed cure for their life-threatening affliction has hit another snag, more than two years after a British company abandoned the effort. It is a story that involves more than $40 million from California’s stem cell agency, federal regulators, the University of California, the agonizingly slow pace of science and 20 children who have been denied care — not to mention a company called Orchard Therapeutics PLC.

News

Outside auditor takes critical look at stem cell agency

A researcher examines meat cultured in laboratory conditions from stem cells. (Photo: Alex_Traksel, via Shutterstock)

California’s $12 billion stem cell agency needs to do better in several critical areas, ranging from planning for the replacement of its current chair to handling information that is key to its operations as well as the tracking of potential sources of royalties. That’s according to that latest performance audit of the 17-year-old agency.

News

‘Bubble baby’ treatment shifted to stem cell agency, UCLA

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.

News

Recipient of $22 million from stem cell agency named to its board

Stem cell researcher and professor Larry Goldstein. (Photo: Screen capture, UCTV).

Larry Goldstein, a well-known stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego who has received nearly $22 million in awards from the California stem cell agency, today was named to its governing board. It was the first time in the history of the 16-year-old agency that a scientist who has received agency awards has been appointed to the board.

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