Duane Roth, my colleague on the CIRM governing board where he serves as one of the vice-chairs, has just published an article, with the title, “The Third Seat at the Table: An Insider’s Perspective on Patient Representatives,” in the Hasting’s Center Report. The Center, an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit bioethics research institute, publishes its report … Continue reading CIRM Innovation: The Patient Advocate Role — Guest blogger Jeff Sheehy

Under the direction of Dr. Gary Steinberg, an advance long considered impossible is moving forward today: Stanford announced yesterday that it will participate in Geron's human clinical safety trials for a novel treatment for spinal cord injury. These are safety trials to be sure and not efficacy trials, more tests will need to be run, … Continue reading Clinical Trial of Hope at Stanford — guest blogger Roman Reed

The end result of stem cell research — the cures, that is — would never come to be if it weren’t for all the people working behind the scenes to support the science and the grant-making. In this post I want to acknowledge a big step CIRM recently took in making the administration that much … Continue reading CIRM gets with times, goes electronic

Last week the City of Hope announced performing their 10,000th bone marrow transplant since 1976 when they were among the first centers to carry out the risky procedure. They said:City of Hope performed its first successful bone marrow transplant in 1976 on a young college student from Indiana who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. … Continue reading City of Hope performs 10,000th bone marrow transplant, works toward therapy for HIV/AIDS

A story in yesterday’s L.A. Times highlights a point that I think often gets lost in the brouhaha over adult vs. embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are great, they really are. That’s why we fund a lot of work with blood, brain, fat and other tissue-specific stem cells (you can see a complete list … Continue reading Embryonic stem cells provide limitless source of platelets

A finding by CIRM-funded researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz sounds pretty esoteric, but could be immensely practical for patients facing a grueling Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT).Hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells really have one preferred home. They tend to stick to their niche in the bone marrow, with relatively few circulating in the … Continue reading Blood Stem Cell Finding Could Yield Practical Results for BMT

We’re back after a vacation filled with news about the second ACT embryonic stem cell trial getting FDA approval earlier this week. This one is for macular degeneration. Their first trial, approved by the FDA on November 22, was for Stargardt’s macular degeneration. That brings the total to three trials testing therapies based on embryonic … Continue reading Three embryonic stem cell trials and counting