Process is not a sexy word. No one gets excited thinking about improving a process. Yet behind every great idea, behind every truly effective program is someone who figured out a way to improve the process, to make that idea not just work, but work better.

It’s not glamorous. Sometimes it’s not even pretty. But it is essential.

Yesterday in Oakland our governing Board approved two new concepts to improve our process, to help us fund research in a way that is faster, smarter and ultimately helps us better meet our mission of accelerating the development of stem cell therapies for patients with unmet medical needs.

The new concepts are for Discovery – the earliest stage of research – and the Translational phase, a critical step in moving promising therapies out of the lab and toward clinical trials where they can be tested in people.

In a news release C. Randal Mills, Ph.D., CIRM’s President and CEO, said that these additions built on the work started when the agency launched CIRM 2.0 in January for the clinical phase of research:

“What makes this approach different is that under CIRM 2.0 we are creating a pathway for research, from Discovery to Translational and Clinical, so that if a scientist is successful with their research at one level they are able to move that ahead into the next phase. We are not interested in research just for its own sake. We are interested in research that is going to help us help patients.”

In the Discovery program, for example, we will now be able to offer financial incentives to encourage researchers who successfully complete their work to move it along into the Translational phase – either themselves or by finding a scientific partner willing to take it up and move it forward.

This does a number of things. First it helps create a pipeline for the most promising projects so ideas that in the past might have stopped once the initial study ended now have a chance to move forward. Obviously our hope is that this forward movement will ultimately lead to a clinical trial. That won’t happen with every research program we fund but this approach will certainly increase the possibility that it might.

There’s another advantage too. By scheduling the Discovery and Translational awards more regularly we are creating a grant system that has more predictability, making it easier for researchers to know when they can apply for funding.

We estimate that each year there will be up to 50 Discovery awards worth a total of $53 million; 12 Translation awards worth a total of $40 million; and 12 clinical awards worth around $100 million. That’s a total of more than $190 million every year for research.

This has an important advantage for the stem cell agency too. We have close to $1 billion left in the bank so we want to make sure we spend it as wisely as we can.

As Jonathan Thomas, Ph.D. J.D, the Chair of our Board, said, having this kind of plan helps us better plan our financial future;

“Knowing how often these programs are going to be offered, and how much money is likely to be awarded means the Board has more information to work with in making decisions on where best to allocate our funding.”

The Board also renewed funding for both the Bridges and SPARK (formerly Creativity) programs. These are educational and training programs aimed at developing the next generation of stem cell scientists. The Bridges students are undergraduate or Master’s level students. The SPARK students are all still in high school. Many in both groups come from poor or low-income communities. This program gives them a chance to work in a world-class stem cell research facility and to think about a career in science, something that for many might have been unthinkable without Bridges or SPARK.

Process isn’t pretty. But for the students who can now think about becoming a scientist, for the researchers who can plan new studies, and for the patients who can now envision a potential therapy getting into clinical trials, that process can make all the difference.