events

CIRM team shines at ASGCT annual meeting in sunny Los Angeles

/ California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) / Leave a comment

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) team spent a week in sunny Los Angeles spreading awareness of its mission at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) annual meeting. 

The goal of the meeting is to provide a place for people in the cell and gene therapy field to learn from the latest scientific research, stay up to date on new technologies and make career-advancing connections with peers. CIRM was a gold sponsor of the event. 

In addition to setting up a booth in the exhibit hall, CIRM participated in two sessions including a workshop that highlights the work being done in cell and gene therapy to advance neurological disorders. Speakers highlighted the impact of CIRM funding on research and the use of technologies such as digital biomarkers, optogenetics, and imaging to advance understanding of such disorders. 

Abla A. Creasey, Shyam Patel, Hartmuth Kolb, Krystof Bankiewicz, Claire Henchcliffe, Peter Francis, Russ Lebovitz

CIRM also participated in a workshop to recognize the work being done through the Accelerating Medicines Partnership Program Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC).  

The BGTC is a public-private partnership, managed by Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), that brings together the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and multiple public and private sector organizations like CIRM to streamline the development and delivery of gene therapies for rare diseases. 

The workshop at ASGCT was the BGTC’s first annual meeting, and highlighted progress so far, engaged with the community on next steps, and provided member and patient perspectives on overcoming the challenges faced in the gene therapy field. Read more about CIRM’s involvement in the BGTC here. 

Lisa Kadyk, Wenlin Zhang (UCLA), Abla A. Creasey, Ross Okamura, Anthony Aldave (UCLA), MM, Doug Chung (UCLA)

Throughout the week-long conference, CIRM had many great conversations with presenters, grantees, researchers and partnering organizations about its funding opportunities, programs and mission.  

Sponsoring and attending conferences like ASGCT not only supports the advancement of cell and gene therapies in California but also provides opportunities for the public to share ideas and feedback directly with CIRM that help shape the future of its programs.  

Check out more photos from the event:

Join Us on Stem Cell Awareness Day (October 12)!

/ Esteban Cortez / Leave a comment

In 2004, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) was created by the people of California to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.  
 
Since then, we’ve expanded our mission to accelerate world class science for California and the world. We’ve funded and supported a pipeline of medical research from initial scientific discovery to development and testing. We also remain committed to training the next generation of regenerative medicine scientists to research cutting edge therapies for patients.  
 
We’ve achieved a lot but recognize there’s still lots more work to be done. That’s why we’re inviting everyone to join us for a virtual webinar on October 12th for Stem Cell Awareness Day, a day when we mark the progress being made in regenerative medicine, stem cell and gene therapy research. 
 
This Stem Cell Awareness Day, the CIRM team will highlight our achievements in research, clinical trials and education. We will also look ahead to explore how we can best further our mission. 
 
Speakers will include: 
Jonathan Thomas — Chair, CIRM Board  
Dr. Kelly Shepard — Associate Director, Scientific Programs 
Dr. Lisa Kadyk — Associate Director, Therapeutics Development 
Dr. Mitra Hooshmand — Sr. Science Officer, Special Projects & Strategic Initiatives 
 
The event is free and you can register here. If you have a question you would like to ask the team, please email them to info@cirm.ca.gov ahead of time. We will do our best to answer all questions during the webinar and those we can’t get to we’ll answer The Stem Cellar.  
 
We look forward to seeing you there! 

CIRM CNS Consortium Workshop – Held Feb. 24 & 25, 2022

/ Mitra Hooshmand, PhD / 1 Comment

Note: Post edited to include post-event workshop videos. Watch both workshop videos here and here.

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO CAST

Shared Stem Cell Laboratory at UCLA

Advance World Class Science, Deliver Real World Solutions, Provide Opportunity for All. 

These comprise the themes of our bold 5-year Strategic Plan. Since its launch less than two months ago, we have hit the ground running. Under the second and third strategic themes, we have already received ICOC approval for 2 concepts: Alpha Clinics Network Expansion and COMPASS educational program. We are now working on the execution of our first theme.  

As indicated in our Strategic Plan, we strongly believe advancing world class science relies on collaborative research that leverages collective scientific knowledge. To that end, we have organized the virtual CIRM CNS Consortium Workshop (click for the agenda and see registration details below) to help us gather feedback from a panel of experts about the best approach for promoting a culture of collaboration.

The vision for this workshop was informed by multiple layers of stakeholder discussions and input that started even prior to the passage of Proposition 14. A quick walk down memory lane reminds us of CIRM’s early and deliberate effort to identify areas of opportunity for promoting a paradigm shift with a “team science” approach, especially in the context of complex diseases such as those affecting the CNS: 

  • In 2019, we organized Brainstorming Neurodegeneration, a workshop where broad stakeholder input was received about the benefits and bottlenecks of developing a consortium approach where genomics and big data, novel stem cell models, and patient data could be collectively leveraged to advance the field of neurodegenerative research in a collaborative manner.  
  • In 2020, just before the passage of Prop 14 and based on input from the 2019 workshop, we already had our eyes on target: the future of collaborative research is in sharable data, and sharing petabytes or more of data requires a collaborative data infrastructure. To better understand the status and bottlenecks of knowledge platforms that could leverage data sharing, we brought together a panel of experts at our 2020 Grantee Meeting. We were encouraged to learn that our laser-focused approach for promoting knowledge sharing was right on target and the panelists suggested that CIRM has a great opportunity to promote a paradigm shift in this area.   
  • In early 2021, immediately after the passage of Prop 14 and building upon our previous conversations, we formed a Strategic Scientific Advisory Panel comprising a distinguished group of national and international scientists in the stem cell field. Once again, we were advised to expand sharable resources (especially in the context of stem cell modeling), bring more attention to complex diseases such as neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, and facilitate knowledge sharing.  
  • In mid 2021, as we were forming our Strategic Plan based on the above input, we pressure-tested our paradigm-shifting vision in a Town Hall and further gathered feedback from California stakeholders about their needs. Again, all arrows pointed to shared resources and data as critical elements for accelerating research.  
CIRM Town Hall workshop hosted in 2021
  • Finally, in late 2021, just before the launch of our Strategic Plan, we organized a Data Biosphere Advisory Committee to advise us on ways to facilitate collaborative knowledge sharing. Here, we explored various models for leveraging and/or generating a data infrastructure in which CIRM-funded data could be managed and shared. The main outcome of this meeting was a recommendation to organize a workshop to test the feasibility and approach for generation of a CIRM knowledge platform. The Committee concluded that CIRM is uniquely positioned to contribute a wealth of data to the broader scientific community. A knowledge platform would provide an avenue for data sharing and collaboration with other groups that are dedicated to accelerating progress in the development of therapies, especially for CNS disorders.  

We were walking on solid ground! In December of 2021, paralleling the input we had received from experts and stakeholders, we launched our 5-year Strategic Plan with the goal of advancing world class science by promoting a culture of collaboration. 

To deliver on this goal, CIRM’s approach is to build the infrastructure (and we don’t mean bricks and mortar) that organizes and democratizes data through:  

  1. A network of shared resources labs that facilitate validation and standardization to support California regenerative medicine researchers  
  1. A data infrastructure where CIRM-funded data can be shared and external datasets leveraged to maximize real-world impact  
  1. We have held a virtual CNS Consortium Workshop on February 24th and 25th where we explored the development of these two resources through the deployment of a consortium and starting in the CNS space as a use case. While the discussions at the workshop centered on the CNS, the shared resources labs will be implemented across cell types and organs. The Data Infrastructure is intended to be a global resource for data sharing and fostering a culture of open science for all CIRM grantees—and the world. The complete workshop agenda can be found here.  

    Watch video recordings of Day 1 and Day 2 of the CNS workshop.

Discovery Days; bringing new life to the life sciences

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

Here are three words you don’t often see strung together: free, science, extravaganza. Yet that’s how Saturday’s Discovery Days at AT&T Park in San Francisco (home of the newly crowned baseball world champion Giants) is being described.

Robots on the rampage at last year's Discovery Days science fair

Robots on the rampage at last year’s Discovery Days science fair

The event truly is a celebration of science. It features more than 150 exhibits on everything from stem cells (that’s us) to rockets and robots and learning how your body and your brain work. It lets you learn about the world through interactive displays, games and experiments that engage and entertain.

Discovery Days is part of the Bay Area Science Festival. The Festival hopes that by making this a fun event it will encourage kids – and that’s the main audience here – to think about pursuing a career in science.

Parents and teachers are an important part of it too. The event gives them both ideas and tools on how to make learning about and teaching science more enjoyable, to help them get young people thinking about science outside the classroom, and to get them to understand that everything they see and do – from throwing a baseball to building a house – involves science.

Engaging the public in science is more than just an academic exercise. In recent years we have seen some fairly sizable cuts in funding for health, medical and scientific research in the US. These cuts are already slowing down our ability to do the research that can lead to new treatments for deadly diseases. Public support for scientific research is essential if we are to stop the cuts and increase funding. Events like Discovery Days can not only educate the public on how fascinating science is, but also how essential public funding for it is.

Bay Area Science Fair logo

So come along tomorrow (November 1) to Discovery Days. The event runs from 11am to 4pm and it’s FREE. It’s at AT&T Park (did I mention that’s the home of the newly crowned champions of baseball, the San Francisco Giants).

Here’s how you can get there