Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group Altruistic cell and tissue donors are my heroes. Without them there would be no “cell” in stem cell research. Individuals have voluntarily donated skin, blood, bone marrow and embryos remaining after infertility treatment to CIRM-funded researchers. Researchers have transformed these donations into stem cell lines. A … Continue reading Coming Full Circle: Getting Research Results to Patients

Heart muscle cells generated from patient skin samplesSome grantees at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have made an interesting discovery about a sometimes deadly heart condition called ARVD/C.The condition comes on when a person is in their 20s. Using stem cells created from a patient’s skin, the scientists created heart tissue. But those youthful cells showed … Continue reading Heart condition mimicked in a lab dish, hope for finding new therapies

Para los subtítulos en español, haga clic en el botón "CC" en la ventana de vídeo.For English closed-captioning, click on the “cc” button in the video window.Invisible pins and needles: we’ve all felt them from time to time when a hand or a leg falls asleep and we try to shake away the numbness. The … Continue reading New video: Living with Multiple Sclerosis, Hoping for a Stem Cell Therapy | Nan Luke

Jonathan Thomas, Chair of the CIRM governing boardWhen the IOM released its report on the stem cell agency last December, praising us for things they said we had done well but also identifying areas and making a series of major recommendations on how we could improve our performance (you can see those recommendations here), we … Continue reading Governing board embraces change for a stronger future

CIRM video with subtitles for non-English speakers and the hearing impairedDisease shows no mercy. It doesn’t care how old you are, where you’re from, or what language you speak. It can affect us all. That’s why we’re launching multilingual subtitling to our YouTube video channel, CIRMTV. We hope this new feature will invite non-English speakers … Continue reading Do you speak stem cell? ¿Habla células madre?

Most news outlets the past week have been filled with scandal-suggesting headlines about a college football player with a fake girlfriend and a bicyclist who sort of admitted to behavior that might have inappropriately enhanced his performance. But neither of these actions really impacted many people in a meaningful way. Contrast that with the long … Continue reading Athlete Behavior Most Deserving Scrutiny Is Not Making Headlines

Jonathan Thomas is chair of the CIRM governing board In early December the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) released its long-awaited report and recommendations on the stem cell agency, detailing what we do well and where we can do better. It was a report we commissioned ourselves because we want to make sure we are doing … Continue reading CIRM governing board to discuss IOM recommendations

I think they should call it “Hope on the Hill”. Or at least that’s how the Buck Institute for Research on Aging appeared to me as my colleagues and I drove up the winding Marin County hillside toward the institute’s campus. We visited the Buck to film the second installment of our Ask the Expert … Continue reading Ask the Expert: Parkinson’s and Stem Cell Research with the Buck Institute’s Xianmin Zeng

Diane Winokur being sworn in by Lieutenant Governor Gavin NewsomDiane Winokur said being sworn in as the newest member of our Governing Board, the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC) was a day of very mixed emotions. Diane is the patient advocate representative for the ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Multiple Sclerosis communities. She says while … Continue reading Mixed emotions for newest CIRM governing board member

Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group  The American Journal of Bioethics dedicated its 100th issue, published this month, to the topic of stem cell research. Editor David Magnus noted, “the explosion of research in this area created an experiment in research ethics oversight—the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight (ESCRO) committee.”ESCROs … Continue reading CIRM Supporting a Remarkable Experiment in Research Ethics