melanoma

CIRM Board Approves Funding for New Clinical Trial Targeting Brain Tumors

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

The governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded almost $12 million to carry out a clinical trial targeting brain tumors.

This brings the total number of CIRM funded clinical trials to 83.  

$11,999,984 was awarded to Dr. Jana Portnow at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope. They are using Neural stem cells (NSCs) as a form of delivery vehicle to carry a cancer-killing virus that specifically targets brain tumor cells.

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant primary brain tumor in adults and each year about 12,000 Americans are diagnosed. The 5-year survival rate is only about 10%.

The current standard of care involves surgically removing the tumor followed by radiation, chemotherapy, and alternating electric field therapy. Despite these treatments, survival remains low.

The award to Dr. Portnow will fund a clinical trial to assess the safety and effectiveness of this stem cell-based treatment for Glioblastoma.

The Board also awarded $3,111,467 to Dr. Boris Minev of Calidi Biotherapeutics. This award is in the form of a CLIN1 grant, with the goal of completing the testing needed to apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to start a clinical trial in people.

This project uses donor fat-derived mesenchymal stem cells that have been loaded with oncolytic virus to target metastatic melanoma, triple negative breast cancer, and advanced head & neck squamous cell carcinoma.

“There are few options for patients with advanced solid tumor cancers such as glioblastoma, melanoma, breast cancer, and head & neck cancer,” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., President and CEO of CIRM. “Surgical resection, chemotherapy and radiation are largely  ineffective in advanced cases and survival typically is measured in months. These new awards will support novel approaches to address the unmet medical needs of patients with these devastating cancers.”

The CIRM Board also voted to approve awarding $71,949,539 to expand the CIRM Alpha Clinics Network. The current network consists of six sites and the Board approved continued funding for those and added an additional three sites. The funding is to last five years.

The goal of the Alpha Clinics award is to expand existing capacities for delivering stem cell, gene therapies and other advanced treatment to patients. They also serve as a competency hub for regenerative medicine training, clinical research, and the delivery of approved treatments.

Each applicant was required to submit a plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to support and facilitate outreach and study participation by underserved and disproportionately affected populations in the clinical trials they serve.

The successful applicants are:

ApplicationProgram TitleInstitution/Principal InvestigatorAmount awarded
INFR4-13579The Stanford Alpha Stem Cell ClinicStanford University – Matthew Porteus  $7,997,246  
INFR4-13581UCSF Alpha Stem Cell ClinicU.C. San Francisco – Mark Walters  $7,994,347  
INFR4-13586A comprehensive stem cell and gene therapy clinic to
advance new therapies for a diverse patient
population in California  		Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – Michael Lewis  $7,957,966    
INFR4-13587The City of Hope Alpha Clinic: A roadmap for equitable and inclusive access to regenerative medicine therapies for all Californians  City of Hope – Leo Wang  $8,000,000
INFR4-13596Alpha Stem Cell Clinic for Northern and Central California  U.C. Davis – Mehrdad Abedi  $7,999,997  
INFR4-13685Expansion of the Alpha Stem Cell and Gene Therapy Clinic at UCLA  U.C. Los Angeles – Noah Federman  $8,000,000
INFR4-13878Alpha Clinic Network Expansion for Cell and Gene Therapies  University of Southern California – Thomas Buchanan  $7,999,983  
INFR4-13952A hub and spoke community model to equitably deliver regenerative medicine therapies to diverse populations across four California counties  U.C. Irvine – Daniela Bota  $8,000,000
INFR4-13597UC San Diego Health CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic  U.C. San Diego – Catriona Jamieson  $8,000,000

The Board also unanimously, and enthusiastically, approved the election of Maria Gonzalez Bonneville to be the next Vice Chair of the Board. Ms. Bonneville, the current Vice President of Public Outreach and Board Governance at CIRM, was nominated by all four constitutional officers: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Treasurer and the Controller.

In supporting the nomination, Board member Ysabel Duron said: “I don’t think we could do better than taking on Maria Gonzalez Bonneville as the Vice Chair. She is well educated as far as CIRM goes. She has a great track record; she is empathetic and caring and will be a good steward for the taxpayers to ensure the work we do serves them well.”

In her letter to the Board applying for the position, Ms. Bonneville said: “CIRM is a unique agency with a large board and a long history. With my institutional knowledge and my understanding of CIRM’s internal workings and processes, I can serve as a resource for the new Chair. I have worked hand-in-hand with both the Chair and Vice Chair in setting agendas, prioritizing work, driving policy, and advising accordingly.  I have worked hard to build trusted relationships with all of you so that I could learn and understand what areas were of the most interest and where I could help shed light on those particular programs or initiatives. I have also worked closely with Maria Millan for the last decade, and greatly enjoy our working relationship. In short, I believe I provide a level of continuity and expertise that benefits the board and helps in times of transition.”

In accepting the position Ms. Bonneville said: “I am truly honored to be elected as the Vice Chair for the CIRM Board. I have been a part of CIRM for 11 years and am deeply committed to the mission and this new role gives me an opportunity to help support and advance that work at an exciting time in the Agency’s life. There are many challenges ahead of us but knowing the Board and the CIRM team I feel confident we will be able to meet them, and I look forward to helping us reach our goals.”

Ms. Bonneville will officially take office in January 2023.

The vote for the new Chair of CIRM will take place at the Board meeting on December 15th.

Chance discovery could lead to a treatment for skin ulcers

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

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Dr. Antoni Ribas in his research lab on the UCLA Campus: Photo courtesy Ann Johansson

When UCLA’s Dr. Antoni Ribas was researching a potential therapy for melanoma, a form of skin cancer, he stumbled upon something unexpected. That unexpected discovery has now resulted in him getting a $5 million dollar award from the the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to develop a therapy to accelerate wound healing in legs.

Venous skin ulcers are open sores on the legs that can take weeks, sometimes even years, to heal and that can cause serious complications if not treated. Around 1% of Americans have venous skin ulcers. They are usually caused by insufficient blood flow from the veins of the legs back to the heart.  The resulting increased blood pressure and swelling in the legs can cause an open wound to form that is painful and difficult to heal, seriously impacting quality of life.   Those most at risk of developing venous leg ulcers are older people, women and non-white populations.

There are no drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this condition and sometimes these ulcers can lead to serious skin and bone infections and, in rare cases, even skin cancer.

In a news release from UCLA, Dr. Ribas describes how his team were testing a drug called vemurafenib on patients with melanoma. Vemurafenib falls into a category of targeted cancer drugs called BRAF inhibitors, which can shrink or slow the growth of metastatic melanoma in people whose tumors have a mutation to the BRAF gene. 

“We noticed that in the first two months of taking this BRAF inhibitor, patients would begin showing a thickening or overgrowth of the skin. It was somewhat of a paradox – the drug stopped the growth of skin cancer cells with the BRAF mutation, but it stimulated the growth of healthy skin cells.”

That’s when the team realized that the drug’s skin stimulating effect could be put to good use for a whole other group of patients – those with chronic wounds. 

“Aside from a few famous cases, discovering a side effect that becomes a therapeutic isn’t that common,” Ribas said. “For this reason, I had to work hard to convince somebody in my lab to follow my crazy idea and take time away from immunotherapy research and do wound healing experiments.”

Thanks to that “crazy idea” Dr. Ribas and his team are now testing a gel called LUT017 that stimulates skin stem cells to proliferate and produce more keratinocytes, a kind of cell essential for repairing skin and accelerating wound healing.

The CLIN1 grant of $5,005,126 will help them manufacture and test LUT017 in pre-clinical models and apply to the FDA for permission to study it in a clinical trial in people.

Maria T. Millan, CIRM’s President and CEO says “This program adds to CIRM’s diverse portfolio of regenerative medicine approaches to tackle chronic, debilitating that lead to downstream complications, hospitalization, and a poor quality of life.”

Latest CIRM TRAN1 awards focus on CAR-based cell therapy to treat cancer

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment

Earlier this week the CIRM ICOC Board awarded $14.5 million to fund three translational stage research projects (TRAN1), whose goal is to support early development activities necessary for advancement to a clinical study or broad end use of a potential therapy. Although all three projects have their distinct area of focus, they all utilize CAR-based cell therapy to treat a certain type of cancer. This approach involves obtaining T cells, which are an immune system cell that can destroy foreign or abnormal cells, and modifying them with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). This enables the newly created CAR-engineered cells to identify specific tumor signals and destroy the cancer. In the sections below we will take a deeper look at each one of these recently approved projects.

TRAN1-12245

Image Description: Hideho Okada, M.D., Ph.D.

$2,663,144 was awarded to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to develop specialized CAR-T cells that are able to recognize and destroy tumor cells in glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that occurs in the brain and spinal cord. The specialized CAR-T cells have been created such that they are able to detect two specific signals expressed in glioblastoma. Hideho Okada, M.D., Ph.D. and his team at UCSF will test the therapy in mice with human glioblastoma grafts. They will be looking at preclinical safety and if the CAR-T cell therapy is able to produce a desired or intended result.

TRAN1-12250

Image Description: Lili Yang, Ph.D.

$5,949,651 was awarded to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to develop specialized CAR-engineered cells from human blood stem cells to treat multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. Lili Yang, Ph.D. and her team have developed a method using human blood stem cells to create invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, a special kind of T cell with unique features that can more effectively attack tumor cells using multiple mechanisms and migrate to and infiltrate tumor sites. After being modified with CAR, the newly created CAR-iNKT cells are able to target a specific signal present in multiple myeloma. The team will test the therapy in mice with human multiple myeloma. They will be looking at preclinical safety and if the CAR-iNKT cells are able to produce a desired or intended result.

TRAN1-12258

Image Description: Cristina Puig-Saus, Ph.D.

Another $5,904,462 was awarded to UCLA to develop specialized CAR-T cells to treat melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Cristina Puig-Saus, Ph.D. and her team will use naïve/memory progenitor T cells (TNM), a subset of T cells enriched with stem cells and memory T cells, an immune cell that remains long after an infection has been eliminated. After modification with CAR, the newly created CAR-TNM cells will target a specific signal present in melanoma. The team will test the therapy in mice with human melanoma. They will be looking at preclinical safety and if the CAR-TNM cells are able to produce a desired or intended result.

Engineered T cells made from stem cells could provide immunity against multiple cancers

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment
Dr. Lily Yang

Within all of our bodies there is a special type of “super” immune cell that holds enormous potential. Unlike regular immune cells that can only attack one cancer at a time, these “super” immune cells have the ability to target many types of cancers at once. These specialized cells are known as invariant natural killer T cells or iNKT cells for short. Unfortunately, there are relatively few of these cells normally present in the body.

However, in a CIRM-funded study, Dr. Lily Yang and her team of researchers at UCLA have found a way to produce iNKT cells from human blood stem cells. They were then able to test these iNKT cells on mice with both human bone marrow and human cancers. These mice either had multiple melanoma, a type of blood cancer, or melanoma, a solid tumor cancer. The researchers then studied what happened to mice’s immune system, cancers, and engineered iNKT cells after they had integrated into the bone marrow.

The results were remarkable. The team found that the blood stem cells now differentiated normally into iNKT cells, producing iNKT cells for the rest of the animal’s life, which was generally about a year. Mice without the engineered stem cell transplants had undetectable levels of iNKT cells while those that received the engineered cells had iNKT cells make up as much as 60% of the total immune system cells. The team also found that the engineered iNKT cells were able to suppress tumor growth in both multiple myeloma and melanoma.

Dr. Yang, in a press release by UCLA health, discussed the significance of the results in this animal model and the enormous potential this could have for cancer patients.

“What’s really exciting is that we can give this treatment just once and it increases the number of iNKT cells to levels that can fight cancer for the lifetime of the animals.” said Yang.

In the same press release, Dr. Yang continued to highlight the study’s importance by saying that,

“One advantage of this approach is that it’s a one-time cell therapy that can provide patients with a lifelong supply of iNKT cells.”

Researchers mentioned that they could control total iNKT cell make up in the immune system depending on how they engineered the blood stem cells. However, more research is needed to determine how these engineered iNKT cells might be useful for treating cancer in humans and evaluating any long-term side effects associated with an increased number of these cells.

The full results of this study were published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Stem cell stories that caught our eye: cancer fighting virus, lab-grown guts work in dogs, stem cell trial to cure HIV

/ Karen Ring / 1 Comment

Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun.

Cancer fighting virus approved for melanoma

(Disclaimer: While this isn’t a story about stem cells, it’s pretty cool so I had to include it.)

The term “virus” generally carries a negative connotation, but in some cases, viruses can be the good guys. This was the case on Tuesday when our drug approval agency, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), approved the use of a cancer fighting virus for the treatment of advanced stage melanoma (skin cancer).

The virus, called T-VEC, is a modified version of the herpesvirus, which causes a number of diseases and symptoms including painful blisters and sores in the mouth. Scientists engineered this virus to specifically infect cancer cells and not healthy cells. Once inside cancer cells, T-VEC does what a virus normally does and wreaks havoc by attacking and killing the tumor.

The beauty of this T-VEC is that in the process of killing cancer cells, it causes the release of a factor called GM-CSF from the cancer cells. This factor signals the human immune system that other cancer cells are nearby and they should be attacked and killed by the soldiers of the immune system known as T-cells. The reason why cancers are so deadly is because they can trick the immune system into not recognizing them as bad guys. T-VEC rips off their usual disguise and makes them vulnerable again to attack.

T-VEC recruits immune cells (orange) to attack cancer cells (pink) credit Dr. Andrejs Liepins/SPL

T-VEC recruits immune cells (orange) to attack cancer cells (pink). Photo credit Dr. Andrejs Liepins/SPL.

This is exciting news for cancer patients and was covered in many news outlets. Nature News wrote a great article, which included the history of how we came to use viruses as tools to attack cancer. The piece also discussed options for improving current T-VEC therapy. Currently, the virus is injected directly into the cancer tumor, but scientists hope that one day, it could be delivered intravenously, or through the bloodstream, so that it can kill hard to reach tumors or ones that have spread to other parts of the body. The article suggested combining T-VEC with other cancer immunotherapies (therapies that help the immune system recognize cancer cells) or delivering a personalized “menu” of cancer-killing viruses to treat patients with different types of cancers.

As a side note, CIRM is also interested in fighting advanced stage melanoma and recently awarded $17.7 million to Caladrius Biosciences to conduct a Phase 3 clinical trial with their melanoma killing vaccine. For more, check out our recent blog.

Lab-grown guts work in mice and dogs

If you ask what’s trending right now in stem cell research, one of the topics that surely would pop up is 3D organoids. Also known as “mini-organs”, organoids are tiny models of human organs generated from human stem cells in a dish. To make them, scientists have developed detailed protocols that sometimes involve the use of biological scaffolds (structures on which cells can attach and grow).

A study published in Regenerative Medicine and picked up by Science described the generation of “lab-grown gut” organoids using intestine-shaped scaffolds. Scientists from Johns Hopkins figured out how to grow intestinal lining that had the correct anatomy and functioned properly when transplanted into mice and dogs. Previous studies in this area used flat scaffolds or dishes to grow gut organoids, which weren’t able to form proper functional gut lining.

Lab-grown guts could help humans with gut disorders. (Shaffiey et al., 2015)

Lab-grown guts could help humans with gut disorders. (Shaffiey et al., 2015)

What was their secret recipe? The scientists took stem cells from the intestines of human infants or mice and poured a sticky solution of them onto a scaffold made of suture-like material. The stem cells then grew into healthy gut tissue over the next few weeks and formed tube structures that were similar to real intestines.

They tested whether their mini-guts worked by transplanting them into mice and dogs. To their excitement, the human and mouse lab-grown guts were well tolerated and worked properly in mice, and in dogs that had a portion of their intestine removed. Even more exciting was an observation made by senior author David Hackham:

“The scaffold was well tolerated and promoted healing by recruiting stem cells. [The dogs] had a perfectly normal lining after 8 weeks.”

The obvious question about this study is whether these lab-grown guts will one day help humans with debilitating intestinal diseases like Crohn’s and IBS (inflammatory bowel disorder). Hackam said that while they are still a long way from taking their technology to the clinic, “in the future, scaffolds could be custom-designed for individual human patients to replace a portion of an intestine or the entire organ.”

Clinical trial using umbilical cord stem cells to treat HIV

This week, the first clinical trial using human umbilical cord stem cells to treat HIV patients was announced in Spain. The motivation of this trial is the previous success of the Berlin Patient, Timothy Brown.

The Berlin patient can be described as the holy grail of HIV research. He is an American man who suffered from leukemia, a type of blood cancer, but was also HIV-positive. When his doctor in Berlin treated his leukemia with a stem cell transplant from a bone-marrow donor, he chose a special donor whose stem cells had an inherited mutation in their DNA that made them resistant to infection by the HIV virus. Surprisingly, after the procedure, Timothy was cured of both his cancer AND his HIV infection.

Berlin patient Timothy Brown. Photo credit: Griffin Boyce/Flickr.

Berlin patient Timothy Brown. Photo credit: Griffin Boyce/Flickr.

The National Organization of Transplants (ONT) in Spain references this discovery as its impetus to conduct a stem cell clinical trial to treat patients with HIV and hopefully cure them of this deadly virus. The trial will use umbilical cord blood stem cells instead of bone-marrow stem cells from 157 blood donors that have the special HIV-resistance genetic mutation.

In coverage from Tech Times, the president of the Spanish Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy, Jose Moraleda, was quoted saying:

“This project can put us at the cutting edge of this field within the world of science. It will allow us to gain more knowledge about HIV and parallel offer us a potential option for curing a poorly diagnosed malignant hematological disease.”

The announcement for the clinical trial was made at the Haematology conference in Valencia, and ONT hopes to treat its first patient in December or January.

How one strong ARM can create a community

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

I spent the last two days at the annual Washington meeting of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), the advocacy organization that CIRM became a founding member of in 2009. Having been CIRM’s representative at that first organizing meeting it has been a pleasure to see the organization mature into an effective advocacy group for our field. It has lived up to its goal of creating a community where all the stakeholders in the field, from academic and industry leaders to patient advocates and investors, can come together in a coordinated front.

ARM and CIRM share the goal of accelerating the development of regenerative therapies to patients with unmet medical needs. The organization also dovetails well with our effort to inform the public about the great hope in the field. To quote ARM’s website: “ARM also works to increase public understanding of the field and its potential to transform human healthcare.”

But that transformation can be fostered or impeded by actions in our nation’s capital, both regulatory and legislative, the main thrust of the past two days’ activities.

While the iconic Capitol building is the most recognized footprint of our Congress, it is the House and Senate office buildings that ring three sides of the Capitol where most of the work gets done, like in the Rayburn building, which houses the office of Dianna DeGette, the Colorado congresswoman and champion of regenerative medicine.

While the iconic Capitol building is the most recognized footprint of our Congress, it is the House and Senate office buildings that ring three sides of the Capitol where most of the work gets done, like in the Rayburn building, which houses the office of Dianna DeGette, the Colorado congresswoman and champion of regenerative medicine.

ARM members presented three specific proposals for advancing the field to members of congress and their staffs. These would:

  • Create a center of excellence to develop technical and process standards for regenerative medicine. Not very sexy on the surface, but agreement in advance on what regulators will accept in creating a new product can shave months or years off the development of needed therapies.
  • Create a special pathway within the Food and Drug Administration—much like the one created for orphan diseases—for “Qualified Regenerative Medicine Products (QRMPs). These products would have shown potential to change the course of a disease with currently unmet medical needs and the FDA would be required to meet with their sponsors to discuss expedited review of the product.
  • Advocate for the adoption of a national regenerative medicine strategy that includes federal agency coordination, support for research and regulatory reform to create a clear and predictable pathway that enables quick approval of safe and effective products. To accomplish that ARM has promoted the establishment of a Regenerative Medicine Coordinating Council within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Jamie Goldfarb with her son Kai and husband Jeff. Photo courtesy Melanoma Research Alliance

Jamie Goldfarb with her son Kai and husband Jeff.
Photo courtesy Melanoma Research Alliance

Jamie Goldfarb, who beat back melanoma with the help of a cell-based immune therapy, made a clear and passionate case for the urgency of making it easier to get these therapies to patients at the ARM member dinner Tuesday night:

“Enhanced awareness for the power of regenerative medicine means a world of difference. It means less suffering, less pain, less fear, less expense, less hardship, less loss. It also means more hope, more determination, more love, more strength for individuals and for society as a whole. Every person in this room and those organizations you represent are improving lives.”

Don Gibbons

Two for 2.0 and Two for us

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

It began as an ambitious idea; yesterday it became a reality when the CIRM Board approved two projects under CIRM 2.0, one of them a Phase 3 clinical trial for a deadly form of skin cancer.

Just to recap, CIRM 2.0 was introduced by Dr. C. Randal Mills when he took over as President and CEO of the stem cell agency last year. The idea is to speed up the way we work, to get money to the most promising therapies and the best science as quickly as possible. It puts added emphasis on speed, patients and partnerships.

Yesterday our Board approved the first two projects to come before them under this new way of working. One was for almost $18 million for NeoStem, which is planning a Phase 3 clinical trial for metastatic melanoma, a disease that last year alone claimed more than 10,000 lives in the U.S.

This will be the first Phase 3 trial we have funded so clearly it’s quite a milestone for us and for NeoStem. If it proves effective in this trial it could well be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in melanoma patients. The therapy itself is unique in that it uses the patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized therapy, one that is designed to engage the patient’s immune system and destroy the cancer.

The Board also approved almost $5 million for Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles to do the late-stage research needed to apply to the FDA for approval for a clinical trial to treat retinitis pigmentosa (RP). RP is a nasty, degenerative condition that slowly destroys a patient’s vision. There is no cure and no effective therapy.

We are currently funding another clinical trial in this area. The two projects use different types of cells and propose different methods of reducing RP’s devastation. CIRM has a record of trying multiple routes to achieve success when dealing with unmet medical needs.

As Dr. Mills said in a news release, both the therapies approved for funding yesterday support our mission:

“CIRM 2.0 is designed to accelerate the development of treatments for people with unmet medical needs, and these two projects clearly fit that description. With the Board’s approval today we will now get this work up and running within the next 45 days. But that’s just the start. We are not just providing financial support, we are also partnering with these groups to provide expertise, guidance and other kinds of support that these teams need to help them be successful. That’s the promise of CIRM 2.0. Faster funding, better programs and a more comprehensive approach to supporting their progress.”

CIRM Chair Jonathan Thomas swearing in new Board members Adriana Padilla and Bob Price

CIRM Chair Jonathan Thomas swearing in new Board members Adriana Padilla and Bob Price

Two seemed to be the number of the day yesterday with the Board welcoming two new members.

Dr. Adriana Padilla is the new Patient Advocate Board member for type 2 Diabetes. She’s a family physician, a member of the University of California, San Francisco-Fresno medical faculty, and an award-winning researcher with expertise in diabetes and its impact on Latino families and the health system in California’s Central Valley. She is also active in the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) and is also a member of the American Diabetes Association.

Dr. Padilla said she hopes her presence will help increase awareness among Latinos of the importance of the work the agency is doing:

“When I was asked about being on the Board I did some research to find out more and it was really touching to learn about some of the exciting work that has been done by the agency and the possibilities that can be done for patients, including those I serve, members of the Latino community.”

Dr. Bob Price is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and a Professor of Political Science at U.C. Berkeley. His academic and teaching interests include comparative politics, with a particular interest in the politics of South Africa. This is Dr. Price’s second time on the Board.  He previously served as the alternate to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

Although he has only been off the Board for a little more than a year Dr. Price said he is aware of the big changes that have taken place in that time and is looking forward to being a part of the new CIRM 2.0.