Most years there is no February 29, and most of the time it might feel like there is little or no help for people with rare diseases. That’s what makes leap day the perfect day to think about those roughly 7,000 diseases that each affect fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. at any time. … Continue reading A rare day for raising rare disease awareness

Yesterday Ellen Feigal, CIRM’s Senior VP of R&D spoke on The HD View with Melissa Biliardi, who is a caregiver and advocate for her son who has Juvenile Huntington’s Disease. You can listen to that hour interview here. Feigal started by talking about what is unique about CIRM, saying:It’s the transformative nature of CIRM’s mission … Continue reading Ellen Feigal discusses CIRM’s Huntington’s Disease research

On Valentine's Day, Pat Brennan of the Orange County Register visited the home of CIRM grantees Brian Cummings and Aileen Anderson in Irvine. In addition to sharing a life, the couple also shares a research effort to develop a stem cell-based therapy for spinal cord injury. Their combined work has been funded in part with … Continue reading CIRM grantees married to their work, spinal cord injury cure

CIRM grantee Bruce Conklin recently spoke at the California Academy of Sciences about using reprogrammed skin cells (so-called iPS cells) to test drugs for lethal side effects in the heart. You can see a 4 minute excerpt of that talk here. One of the most common reasons for a drug to fail clinical trials is … Continue reading Stem cells can screen drugs for sometimes-lethal side effects

Jonathan Thomas is chair of the CIRM governing board. This week CIRM delivered a document to the governor, state controller, state treasurer and state legislature describing how CIRM intends to ensure that its mission extends beyond the $3 billion authorized by proposition 71. Based on our current estimate, we expect to issue the final grants … Continue reading Jonathan Thomas discusses plans to extend CIRM’s benefits to California

Former CIRM board member John Reed, Professor and CEO of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, recently interviewed Francis Collins for Medscape one-on-one. Collins is Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a vocal supporter of funding stem cell research.The interview covers Collins’ own beginnings in science and advances over the last decade in genome … Continue reading Francis collins on stem cells, disease modeling, and finding therapies

This weekend the Sacramento Bee ran an opinion piece about the future of stem cell research in general, and CIRM’s role in particular. The story was interesting in its focus on the process of developing and funding a new therapy—which can be long and arduous, and it only getting more so.David Lesher wrote:Those who speculate … Continue reading CIRM: the audacious vision is still possible

At CIRM, our Valentine’s Day present came in the form of a paper published in The Lancet by grantee Eduardo Marban. He showed the results of a study finding that stem cells taken from the heart can help reduce scar tissue after a heart attack.Marban, who is director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, spoke to … Continue reading Valentine’s Day Stem Cell Wish: Mending Broken Hearts

Cerebellar stem cells engineered to express Myc and mutant p53 (shown here) give rise to aggressive tumors that resemble a particularly malignant form of human medulloblastoma, providing a new model that will help scientists develop more effective therapies for this disease.When CIRM grantee Robert Wechsler-Reya received a Leadership Award to lure him from Duke University … Continue reading Personalized medicine may help treat childhood brain tumors

Sheng Ding of the J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco has been making a name for himself in stem cell circles. Now he’s being recognized in the business community, earning a place on the San Francisco Business Times’ 2012 40 under 40 roster. Ding has a New Faculty Award and a New Cell Lines … Continue reading CIRM grantee Sheng Ding among the Bay Area’s 40 leaders under 40