CIRM announced two sets of awards today that both should make major impact including its first clinical trial via Geron and $38 million for 27 basic biology studies. First Clinical Trial. Today CIRM awarded $25 million to support Geron’s FDA-approved clinical trial for spinal cord injury. This is CIRM’s first award to a for-profit company …
CIRM funds $25 million for Geron trial, $38 million for basic biology Read More »
What is a survivor? Dan Zenka, Senior VP of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, recently pondered this question in an excellent post on his blog. The post has also drawn more than 50 comments, which I found very interesting based on the range of opinions and different perspectives. The comments are about prostate cancer, but could …
When does politics trump hope? It seems all the time. I think politicians frequently take positions on science-related issues that they either don’t really believe or understand. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for example, I don’t believe that most national level Republican leaders oppose ES cell research. Most of us have either ourselves faced injuries or …
Now and then we will revisit some of our most popular posts and/or posts with the most comments. One of the best: The Monster Tumor: What is a teratoma really? You can go to the link above to read the original post and comments but I’ve pasted the post itself below. In stem cell research …
Imagine a tea party, where instead of tea, they were serving only Kool-Aid. Not only did you have to drink it, no questions asked, but you had to say it was tea. Despite the bright cherry red color, the unmistakable smell from the artificial flavoring, and maybe even the big Kool-Aid Pitcher symbol with the …
The tragic 9.0 earthquake and tsunamis that hit Japan a few weeks ago are having lasting consequences not only for Japan, but also for the world via radiation. One area of particular concern is the radiation that has leaked and is continuing to leak from the damaged nuclear reactors. At this point, the radiation …
A reality check on the radiation spreading across the globe Read More »
Before stem cell research was on everyone’s minds and before the phrase “regenerative medicine” was familiar to most scientists, The Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999 funded research into treating paralysis. It was a revolutionary piece of legislation, named after my friend Roman Reed, a true hero. Roman was playing college football …
Support Funding for the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Program Read More »
UPDATE: Judy Woodruff just posted an interesting piece on the budget battle for NIH. You can read it here. We have had a welcome surprise of late: conservatives are telling Republicans (yes, you read that right) not to cut the NIH budget. The federal government has been running on a string of continuing resolutions (CRs) …
Conservatives agree: proposed Republican budget cuts for NIH are mindless Read More »
In it’s first five years in existence, CIRM has awarded almost $1.2 billion for stem cell research in the state of California in the form of just over 400 grants. To give you some perspective on that amount of research funding, let’s compare this CIRM funding to NIH funding for stem cell research across the …
Everyone has been understandably stressed about how the ongoing federal legislative process might effect funding for research including stem cell research. Particularly worrisome was the proposal from the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives to cut $100 billion from the budget. Today brought news (reported at one of my favorite blogs, The Great Beyond) that in …
Great news: Initial GOP list of proposed cuts mostly spares NIH! Read More »