Much as we love California, and we really do, even we have to admit that genius knows no boundaries and that great scientific research is taking place all over the world. As our goal as an agency is to accelerate the development of successful therapies for people in need it only makes sense that we would try and tap into that genius, wherever it is, in whatever way we can. That’s where our Collaborative Funding Partnership (CFP) program comes in.

Michel Hivert, Executive Director at MATIMOP (L) and ICOC Chairman Jonathan Thomas

Under Proposition 71, the voter-approved initiative that created the stem cell agency, all the research we fund has to be in California. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help create collaborations between researchers here – that we fund – and researchers in other parts of the world who get funding from other sources. And we do just that. In fact we now have 24 CFPs stretching from New York state to Brazil, Japan, the UK and Australia.

And now we have added two more. One with Poland two weeks ago  and today, with Israel. As the Chair of our governing Board, Jonathan Thomas said in a news release , the goal of these agreements is simple, to advance stem cell research around the world:

“Israel has long had a robust stem cell research community. Through this newly announced collaboration, we hope to generate partnerships between Israeli and California scientists that build on our complementary strengths and generate joint research projects that will benefit patients everywhere.”

Dr. Andy David, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific North West, echoed those sentiments:

“It represents a practical expression of shared interests that is unusual for its depth and range. Israel and California are on opposite corners of the globe geographically, but they are practically coming closer every day. The reason for this thriving relationship is the understanding that we are strong mutual assets.”

But nice as these partnerships are the only questions that really matter are do these collaborations really make a difference; do they really help increase the likelihood of a successful therapy? The answer from our experience is yes. For example, a team we are funding at Stanford is collaborating with a team from the Medical Research Council in the UK, focused on solid tumor cancers. The Stanford team has been given approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to run a clinical trial testing this approach on solid tumors, while the UK team is using the same approach to tackling acute myeloid leukemia (AML) an often-fatal cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Knowledge gained from one trial may well benefit the other and could ultimately lead to approaches to treating other solid tumor cancers such as breast, ovarian, bladder and colon.

Disease does not stop at the border and we see no reason for our engagement with the best science, and the best scientists, to stop there either. Our goal is to find cures, and we’ll go wherever we have to and work with whoever we can to meet that goal.