Roman Reed has been a long-time, highly effective stem cell research advocate. He was one of the first recipients of The Niche Stem Cell Person of the Year Award.
For years here in California something called Roman’s Law provided crucial funding for research. Eventually the funding ran out so now it’s time to help make the funding active again.
There will be a new bill called the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act to provide as much as five year’s of funding to Roman’s Law to activate new awards.
Assembly member Alex Lee will sponsor the new bill to provide $1M in annual funding to Roman’s Law.
For a little more background see this post by Roman’s wonderful dad and another great patient advocate, Don Reed.
From Roman
I asked Roman for some words on the new Act:
“California has the biomedical talent, resources and infrastructure necessary to achieve novel treatments for the suffering. Since the federal government is cutting back on research grant funding. California is taking a leading role funding and finding treatment treatments with the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of California.Roman‘s Law has already granted $12.4 million and attracted $82.4 million in out of state matching research grants, started America’s first FDA approved hESC human clinical trials with Dr. Hans Keirstead, and achieved 124 peer reviewed medical breakthroughs.Take a stand, so one day everybody can.”