Since the first grant was issued in April 2006, CIRM has funded a wide range of research conducted by top scientists at UCLA for a wide range of diseases. To give a retrospective look at all the research, UCLA released a news article that describes all this work up until this past September. During this period, UCLA researchers were awarded 120 grants totaling more than $307 million. We’ll highlight some of these findings from the article below.

51 Basic Biology CIRM Grants

Basic biology research encompasses very early stage work that focuses on the very essentials such as how stem cells work, how to successfully turn a stem cell into another type of cell, and other basic mechanisms that underly the stem cell research field. This research is critical because they inform future therapies for dozens of conditions including heart disease, genetic and blood disorders, cancer, spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders.

3 Consecutive Year-Long CIRM Training Grants

These CIRM grants are essential in training the next generation of scientists and physicians in the regenerative medicine field. The CIRM training grants supported 146 graduate students, post‐doctoral fellows, and clinical fellows working in UCLA laboratories by providing them year-long  training fellowships. This program was so successful that the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center funded 26 additional fellowships to supplement CIRM’s support.

5 COVID-19 Related Grants

Shortly after the coronavirus pandemic, CIRM authorized  $5 million in emergency funding to fund COVID-19 related projects. UCLA has received a $1.02 million to support four discovery research projects and one translational project. Discovery research promotes promising new technologies that could be translated to enable broad use and improve patient care. Translational research takes it a step further by promoting the activities necessary for advancement to clinical study of a potential therapy.

1 Alpha Stem Cell Clinic (ASCC) Grant

One award was used to establish the UCLA‐UCI Alpha Stem Cell Clinic. It is one of five leading medical centers throughout California that make up the CIRM ASSC Network, which specializes in the delivery of stem cell therapies by providing world-class, state of the art infrastructure to support clinical research.

8 Clinical Trials

Out of the 64 CIRM-funded clinical trials to date, eight of these have been conducted at UCLA. Most notably, this includes a stem cell gene therapy approach developed by Donald Kohn, M.D. The approach was used in three different clinical trials for the following genetic diseases: X-linked chronic granulomatous disease (X-CGD), bubbly baby disease (also known as SCID), and sickle cell disease. The SCID trial resulted in over 50 infants being cured of the disease, including little Evie. The other five clinical trials conducted at UCLA were for corneal damage, lung damage, skin cancer, sarcomas, and solid tumors.

Wide Reach of Conditions

CIRM grants at UCLA have supported research related to many conditions, including the following:

To read the full UCLA article that discusses some of the other grants, click here.