Today the San Francisco Giants will be celebrating their World Series victory with a parade that will draw hundreds of thousands of fans to AT&T park, directly across the street from CIRM headquarters. With sports so much on our minds here at CIRM, this seems like a good day to talk about stem cells in … Continue reading On stem cells, athletics and the world series (Go Giants!)

CIRM is cosponsoring the Investor and Partnering Forum at the Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa in San Diego. It's an effort to build relationships between investors, companies, and entrepreneurial academics.Stem cells have been in the news a lot lately thanks to Nobel prizes and scientific discoveries. But for many biotech companies all the good … Continue reading Relationship building in San Diego: Bringing investors into regenerative medicine

Yesterday, at a meeting of our governing board – the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC) – we were delighted to see a project we have helped nurture from a cool theory into a truly promising therapy head towards clinical trials in people. The ICOC approved funding for a ViaCyte stem cell therapy for type 1 … Continue reading Diabetes stem cell therapy moving toward clinical trials

CIRM grantee at UCLA Michael Teitell spoke with high school students on Stem Cell Awareness DayMichael Teitell working with one of his lab studentsWhen speaking with high school students one learns to always expect the unexpected. Such visits can be exhilarating and surprising and are never boring. I was asked to write a guest blog … Continue reading UCLA scientist shares stem cell research with the next generation

Astronomer Caroline Herschel was one of those to get full entry on Wikipedia.Tielemann, 1829/W. J. Herschel/The Royal SocietyAs a former woman in science and a current woman in online media, a story from Nature this week struck home. They write about an edit-a-thon held by the Royal Society in London, which brought in 15 female … Continue reading Women in science get a boost from women in online media

By far the predominant stem cell therapy today is a bone marrow transplant. The 60,000 people who receive a transplant this year have Nobel Laureate E. Donnall Thomas to thank for the treatment. Thomas, who died this week, began working on bone marrow transplants back in the 1950s, when the prevailing wisdom held that no … Continue reading Father of bone marrow transplant — first stem cell therapy — dies

Tony Wyss-CorayIn addition to their usual job of creating new cells, stem cells in the brain turn out to be excellent managers. That’s according to CIRM-funded researchers at Stanford University, who have recently published a paper describing how stem cells in the brain control the behavior of other cells.The work could help explain why stem … Continue reading Who’s the boss of the brain? How stem cells repair damage

This past week a story unfolded that ended with the dismissal of a researcher from the University of Tokyo who had claimed to be the first to test a therapy based on reprogrammed iPS cells in humans. It all began last week when CIRM grantee and UC Davis scientist Paul Knoepfler blogged about research being … Continue reading Testing iPS cells in people? Not yet

Ellen Feigal, M.D. Senior VP for Research & Development at CIRMTrying to move a promising therapy from the lab into clinical trials in patients is one of the most challenging parts of any drug discovery process. But when that new therapy involves a stem cell or cell-tissue it can be doubly so. You are not … Continue reading Getting approval for stem cell clinical trials: a step by step guide