By Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley)For a person struggling with a life-altering diagnosis, the click of a button can connect patients and their families to cutting edge research. Coupled with the advice of a doctor, access to online libraries such as PubMedCentral, which provides access to federally-funded biomedical research, can provide patients … Continue reading Assemblymember Nancy Skinner: CIRM to Adopt Public Access Policy for Publications

Julie Saba grew up with a father who was a muscle biochemist and, out of rebellion, she swore she’d never go into research, especially muscle research. She was just going to be a doctor. A doctor who, years later, did run a research lab, but in cancer. Then, when studying a particularly interesting gene involved … Continue reading Gene found to activate muscle stem cells in mice with muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy is a particularly tragic—and lethal—disease that currently has no effective therapy. But researchers at the University of Minnesota have made some progress in using stem cells to treat a form of muscular dystrophy in mice. Muscular dystrophy can occur in adults but is most common in children and causes the person’s muscles to … Continue reading Stem cells used to treat muscular dystrophy in mice

Retinal pigment epithelium derived from human embryonic stem cells. David Buchholz and Sherry Hikita / University of California, Santa BarbaraThere are many great reasons for working at CIRM. The work is clearly tremendously important; the people who work here are super smart and passionate about what they do; and there are lots of great coffee … Continue reading Stem cell therapy for vision loss: experts discuss research progress

We have written a fair amount recently about taking tissue samples from people with genetic diseases and reprograming those cells to become induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC). The goal is to mature those cells into the impacted tissue, say dopamine-producing neurons in Parkinson’s disease, in the dish. Then you can see how they behave compared … Continue reading Questions arise about disease-in-a-dish model for some diseases

iPS cells reprogrammed from skin (Kathrin Plath/UCLA)Geoff Lomax is CIRM's Senior Officer to the Standards Working Group A few weeks ago we held a meeting of our Standards Working Group to discuss medical and ethical standards relating to the recently approved proposal for creating a stem cell bank. I admit that a discussion of medical and … Continue reading Clear communication: Making sure patients understand stem cell research participation

Robert Blelloch The Scientist wrote a short profile of stem cell biologist Robert Blelloch of University of California, San Francisco in their monthly Scientist to Watch series.I’ll skip over the portion of the profile in which they chronicle his graduate school work, which was in the same roundworm that so scarred my own memories of … Continue reading Stem cell researcher Robert Blelloch on Scientist to Watch list #ucsf

We’ve been rolling out our 2011 Annual Report stories throughout the past few weeks. The full report is posted online and available for download. Today we are introducing a story about CIRM’s cell banking initiative.Frozen in two California labs sit 20 new human embryonic stem cell lines created by CIRM grantees and certified for use … Continue reading Making stem cell lines available to scientists who need them

Alan Trounson, CIRM PresidentEach 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.The first two articles featured in this month’s report focus … Continue reading Guest blogger Alan Trounson — April’s stem cell research highlights

We’ve been rolling out our 2011 Annual Report stories throughout the past few weeks. The full report is posted online and is available for download from our website. Today we are introducing a story about CIRM’s efforts to overcome barriers in the path to the clinic.CIRM’s primary focus is on funding stem cell research. But … Continue reading Helping grantees overcome barriers in the path to new therapies