BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

CIRM's clinical mindset

May 7, 2009 7:00 AM UTC

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) didn't waste much time putting the proceeds from an April 22 state bond sale to work. Last week, the institute's 29-member governing board approved $67.7 million to fund 15 grants focused on early translational stem cell research.

Although CIRM now has awarded $761 million since the institute was founded following approval by California voters in 2004, the new Early Translational Research grants are the first "specifically designed to move promising basic stem cell research closer to the clinic," said spokesperson Don Gibbons. The grants address two broad areas: the actual design of new stem cell therapies-mostly in neurological indications like Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD)-and the removal of bottlenecks associated with stem cell manufacture, purification and characterization...