In the last week, a number of newspapers in California have run articles or editorials about CIRM, some negative. I think in part this attention was stimulated by the Election of a new Chair at CIRM. The new Chair for CIRM is Dr. Jonathan Thomas, who I am confident will do an outstanding job. On […]
Why I am super optimistic about the future of CIRM Read More »
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 »
Is CIRM the tops? Overall, not focusing just on ES cell research, who is the largest funding agency in the world for stem cell research? CIRM funding If you think about CIRM, funding stem cell grants just in California, versus NIH funding stem cell research across the country, who might you imagine would have provided
CIRM is the largest funder of overall stem cell research in the world 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
The Amazing Path of CIRM in its first 5 years Read More »
CIRM announced today that it had appointed Ellen Feigal, M.D., to be its first VP for Research Development. Dr. Feigal will begin the job on Jan. 31. Dr. Feigal is a graduate of UC Davis Med School (where I am writing this from; go UC Davis SOM!) and is currently Executive Medical Director for Global
CIRM Appoints Ellen Feigal, UC Davis Grad and Executive Med Director of Amgen as VP Read More »
It’s always fun to see startups with cool ideas in the regenerative medicine space and a new one called GC Therapeutics got some nice coverage this week. What do you think the name of this firm stands for? I have one main idea I mention below. Before we jump into it, I want to introduce
How is research looking on stem cells for diabetes? I’m feeling more encouraged about the clinical research in that area. Before we jump into that let’s talk about two other things. The big news of the week was the felony plea deal by Liveyon’s John Kosolcharoen to charges related to marketing an unapproved cell therapy
The private cord blood bank industry has promised families all kinds of great things over the years. A typical ad for such cord blood banks might say, “Your child may need cord blood in the future for a cure.” The industry also often uses the analogy of frozen cord blood as an insurance policy for
Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a lot going for it right now on the cell therapy front. For instance, they have the strongest type 1 diabetes cell therapy pipeline after some recent acquisitions. Still it’s not a simple matter to succeed in the cell therapy space even with one therapy for one targeted disease. Trials are tough
Weekly reads: Vertex, stem cells for MS, Athersys, 900-day paper review at Nature Read More »
The FDA has a unique mechanism called RMAT or regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation. It’s intended to move investigational regenerative therapies forward more effectively. RMAT data I recently updated The Niche RMAT list and it has jumped to 85. The FDA has approved many new RMATs this year. The data on how many applications the FDA