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Stem cell agency’s DEI program still a work in progress
The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has strong requirements for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But there is clinker in the CIRM effort – secrecy.
The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has strong requirements for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But there is clinker in the CIRM effort – secrecy.
One year ago this month, a $5.5 billion wave washed over California’s ambitious stem cell agency and left it refreshed and renewed for another decade or so of searching for “miraculous” treatments for a host of deadly, incurable afflictions. It is now on a pace to hand out $38,000 an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That would amount to $519 million in awards between this time last year and the end of the agency’s current fiscal year in June.
A small firm in Menlo Park, Ca., is probably the only company in the nation that is named after the number of a particular human protein. It is a small number too, only 47. But it has large implications for California’s financially strapped state stem cell agency.
The price tag for refinancing California’s unique and ambitious stem cell research program could run to close to $7.8 billion, give or take a few hundred million dollars or more. So says the state’s legislative analyst in a financial analysis of a proposed ballot initiative that is likely to be on next November’s ballot.
One of the nation’s leading regenerative medicine industry groups is touting multi-billion dollar savings that may be achieved with the type of stem cell and gene therapies that are being developed with cash from California’s financially beleaguered stem cell program.
The man expected to lead the drive for $5.5 billion more for California’s stem cell agency today said the Trump restrictions on fetal tissue research represent a dangerous precedent that threatens the health of all Americans.
Some folks in Europe are worried about stem cell research, particularly about organizations like California’s $3 billion stem cell agency. The alarm was sounded just yesterday in Horizon, which calls itself “The EU Research and Innovation Magazine.”
The president of the California stem cell agency, Randy Mills, yesterday said that the firms that responded to an ambitious proposal to create a $150 million public/private partnership were seeking to make a “better deal” than the agency had offered. Mills said that the agency was “not going to give away something that is not in the best interests of the people of California.”