Yesterday Geron announced that they would be discontinuing their embryonic stem cell program, including the groundbreaking spinal cord injury trial that CIRM had been supporting. You can read more about the decision in Geron's announcement and in CIRM's press release. Geron has returned the $6.4 million they had received from CIRM with accrued interest.It's not … Continue reading Q&A about Geron’s decision and its implications for the stem cell field

Sen. Art Torres (Ret.) is vice-chair of the CIRM governing board. His biography is available here.A ballot measure that defined a fertilized egg as a person failed to pass in Mississippi on Tuesday. The amendments passage would have restricted stem cell research, and the Washington Post reported on additional concerns caused by the measure:Opponents say … Continue reading The Personhood Amendment: California here we come

Todd Dubnicoff is CIRM’s videographer and video editorNo family reunion is complete until somebody brings out the video camera. Our CIRM family is no different. So my colleague Amy Adams and I went on-location to downtown San Francisco in mid-September to film the 2011 CIRM Grantee Meeting. This almost annual, three day event brings together … Continue reading Lights…Camera…Stem Cells! Filming the 2011 CIRM Grantee Meeting

Last weekend Nature published a paper showing that nerve cells derived from embryonic stem cells can treat symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice, rats and monkeys. The scientists, who were from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, started with embryonic stem cells. They matured those cells into precursors of the ones that disappear in … Continue reading Neurons made from embryonic stem cells treat Parkinson’s disease symptoms in animals

Kids made embryonic stem cells out of Play Doh at the Bay Area Science Festival.It was fun waking up yesterday morning to the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle "Science fair hits it out of the park." It was a bit of an obvious headline because on Sunday 21,000 people had come to AT&T Park, … Continue reading Kids lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to create stem cells

At our governing board meeting on October 26, the board approved a $30 million initiative that will be critical for making sure that research funded by CIRM eventually makes it to patients.In the past year, CIRM has begun funding early phase clinical trials for stem cell-based therapies. These early phase clinical trials are done to … Continue reading Forming industry partnerships, ensuring new therapies reach patients

Each month CIRM President Alan Trounson gives his perspective on recently published papers he thinks will be valuable in moving the field of stem cell research forward. This month’s report, along with an archive of past reports, is available on the CIRM website.This month’s lead story garnered considerable media attention. A team at the New … Continue reading Guest blogger Alan Trounson — October’s stem cell research highlights

Yesterday brought news about stem cells in older people. Today, there's news by CIRM grantees about how a single gene alteration in a stem cell can help keep an entire organ more youthful -- at least in flies.The work was by a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Salk Institute … Continue reading Fly stem cells give insights into aging and longevity

We've written quite a bit about research by CIRM grantee Irina Conboy at the University if California Berkeley (blogged here), who has found that the muscle stem cells in older people don't respond as enthusiastically to repair muscle damage — much to the dismay of aging athletes. What they've also learned is that environment is … Continue reading Older stem cells returned to youth