CIRM President & CEO Randy Mills doesn’t want “good”, he wants “better”

Better.

With that single word Randy Mills, our President and CEO, starts and ends his letter in our 2015 Annual Report and lays out the simple principle that guides the way we work at CIRM.

Better.

But better what?

“Better infrastructure to translate early stage ideas into groundbreaking clinical trials. Better regulatory practices to advance promising stem cell treatments more efficiently. Better treatments for patients in need.”

“Better” is also the standard everyone at CIRM holds themselves to. Getting better at what we do so we can fulfill our mission of accelerating stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

The 2015 Annual Report highlights the achievements of the last year, detailing how we invested $135 million in 47 different projects at all levels of research. How our Board unanimously passed our new Strategic Plan, laying out an ambitious series of goals for the next five years from funding 50 new clinical trials, to creating a new regulatory process for stem cell therapies.

The report offers a snapshot of where our money has gone this year, and how much we have left. It breaks down what percentage of our funding has gone to different diseases and how much we have spent on administration.

Jonathan Thomas, the Chair of our Board, takes a look back at where we started, 10 years ago, comparing what we did then (16 awards for a total of $12.5 million) to what we are doing today. His conclusion; we’re doing better.

But we still have a long way to go. And we are determined to get even better.

P.S. By the way we are changing the way we do our Annual Report. Our next one will come out on January 1, 2017. We figured it just made sense to take a look back at the last year as soon as the new year begins. It gives you a better (that word again) sense of what we did and where we  are heading. So look out for that, coming sooner than you think.