Sanford Consortium

How this scientist changed paths to become a stem cell researcher

/ Esteban Cortez / Leave a comment

Aaliyah Staples-West didn’t originally envision becoming a stem cell researcher. As a student at San Diego State University, she admits that she sometimes struggled with reading protocols or finishing experiments on time. She also was originally studying chemistry, a very distinct scientific field from regenerative medicine. 

But when she saw a post on Instagram about the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Bridges to Stem Cell Research and Therapy internship program, she did a bit of research about it and ultimately stepped up to pursue the opportunity.   

“Everything I was looking for aligned with what I wanted to do,” she says. “I applied and I was greeted with open arms to an acceptance about a week later.” She even stayed in college for an extra semester so she could enroll in the CIRM internship program.

During the year-long internship—which took place at UC San Diego in the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine—Aaliyah studied and modeled a rare disease called Cockayne Syndrome B (CSB). CSB is a rare disease which causes short stature, premature aging, severe photosensitivity, and moderate to severe learning delay. 

In the lab, Aaliyah worked with stem cells to derive brain organoids, which are three-dimensional, organ-like clusters of cells. She also researched vascular endothelial cells, which form a single cell layer that lines all blood vessels. She tested and observed these to further understand the causes of CSB.  

Aaliyah also had opportunities to do work outside of the lab, traveling to various scientific conferences across the state to explain her work to other scientists.

She enjoyed sharing her findings, but Aaliyah says it was a challenge at first to learn all the complex science and terminology relating to stem cells. She overcame that obstacle by asking lots of questions and putting in extra effort to understanding the biology and reasoning behind her work.  

“I would write down all the terms my mentor would say that I didn’t understand and look them up,” she says. “I would even practice using them in a sentence. I made it very intentional that if I wanted to continue researching in this field I needed to be on the same page.”

Aaliyah and her Bridges cohort at the CIRM Bridges conference in San Diego.

Now that her internship is over, Aaliyah is much more confident and has learned various techniques to successfully complete research projects. She now works for biotechnology company Resilience as a research associate working with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and hematopoietic stem cells. Though she originally intended to go to medical school, she is now looking into MD/PhD programs where she can apply all that she’s learned in her training and education.  

“I never thought I would have a love for stem cell research until participating in this program,” she says. “Stem cell research and regenerative medicine provide infinite opportunities for developing, understanding and potentially curing diseases. It’s important to continue this type of research to ensure science is quickly evolving and to make an impact on overall health.” 

To date, there are 1,663 Bridges alumni, and another 109 Bridges trainees are completing their internships in 2022.  Learn more about CIRM’s internship programs here. 

All photos courtesy of Sarah White/SDSU and Aaliyah Staples-West.

CIRM Bridges intern researches stem cells to grow kidneys 

/ Esteban Cortez / Leave a comment

David Anjakos in the lab. Photo courtesy Sarah White/SDSU.

When he was younger, David Anjakos experienced kidney failure due to an autoimmune disease, leaving him without kidneys in his body. As a trainee in the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s Bridges to Stem Cell Research Internship Program, Anjakos is researching methods of growing organs for transplantation to help people on a transplant list, himself included. 

By now, Anjakos thought he’d have his own kidney and that he would be off the transplant list and dialysis. That’s not the case, so he realized he wanted to try and do something about it.  

“Fifteen years later, we haven’t really gotten there. It just shows how complex the problem is and how even with thousands of hours and scientists working on this, we still haven’t quite got there,” he says. “What that showed me is that I needed to step in. We need more people on these problems.” 

David Anjakos in the lab. Photo courtesy Sarah White/SDSU.

That’s what inspired him to join the CIRM Bridges Program at San Diego State University. Specifically, he wanted to get into stem cells to try to control them to do what he wanted them to do. He’s completing his internship at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, where he is working toward developing a protein that will be able to activate stem cells to turn into different organs. 

If successful, this will be important for drug discovery, growing organs and vascularization, the process of growing blood vessels into a tissue to improve oxygen and nutrient supply. 

“CIRM’s Bridges to Stem Cell Research program has really been a huge opportunity for me to get into science, to practice science, to practice the skills that I’ll need,” said Anjakos. “It has really helped me in my confidence in my ability to do science.” 

After finishing his Bridges internship at the Sanford Consortium, Anjakos plans to start a PhD program so he can apply all he has learned from creating approximations of the Wnt protein that is essential for turning stem cells into organs with functioning vessels.  

To date, there are 1,663 Bridges alumni, and another 109 Bridges trainees are completing their internships in 2022. 

Started in 2009, the Bridges program provides paid stem cell research internships to students at universities and colleges that don’t have major stem cell research programs. Each Bridges internship includes thorough hands-on training and education in regenerative medicine and stem cell research, and direct patient engagement and outreach activities that engage California’s diverse communities. Click here to learn more about CIRM’s educational programs.  

This story was first covered by Sarah White and Susanne Clara Bard. Read the original release on the San Diego State University website.  

 

A grandmother’s legacy, a stem cell scientist

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Emily Smith, CIRM Bridges student

The California Institute for Regenerative (CIRM) has a number of education programs geared towards training the next generation of stem cell and gene therapy researchers. Each student comes to the program with their own motivation, their own reasons for wanting to be a scientist. This is Emily Smith’s story.

Surrounded by the cold white walls of a hospital room, my family suddenly found themselves on the other side of medicine. Void of any answers or cures, this new reality was full of doubt. As we witnessed assurance dwindle into a look of angst, the doctor’s lips stiffened as he faltered to say the words that would change my grandmother’s life forever. The spinal cancer they had gone in to extract was a misdiagnosed nothing. Instead, the exploration of his scalpel left her paralyzed from the chest down.

Seemingly simple day-to-day moments of my life became the building blocks of my passion for science today. Early realizations of the hurdles laced throughout my grandmother’s life. Vivid memories of my mother’s weary smile as she read articles on the newest advancements in stem cell research. Collectively, what these fragments of time nurtured was hope. I grew to have a dream that something different awaited us in the future. With purpose, I dove into the world of research as an undergraduate.

Today, I am a CIRM Bridges to Stem Cell Research Intern at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. I received my acceptance into the program about a month after my grandmother’s passing. She never saw a cure, let alone an effective treatment.

My position allows me to understand why stem cell research takes time. The road from the bench to the clinic is a painstakingly deliberate one. And although we seek reason and order from the world of science, what we often find is how imperfect it all can be. At its root, I found that research is truly a human endeavor. That is why, as scientists, we must grapple with our lack of knowledge and failures with humility.

CIRM’s programs that train tomorrow’s scientists, such as Bridges, are important because they do more than simply transfer over skills from one generation to the next. Over the next year, I get the valuable experience of working with scientists who share a common dream. They understand the urgency of their research, value the quality of their findings, and put patient needs first. This mentorship ensures that a sense of responsibility is carried on throughout this field.

I applied to this program because stem cell research gave my family the gift of hope. Now, on the other side of the wait, I wish to serve patients and families like my own. I am incredibly grateful to be a part of the Bridges program and I will devote the full extent of my knowledge towards the advancement of this field.

U.C. San Diego Scientist Larry Goldstein Joins Stem Cell Agency’s Board

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment
Larry Goldstein, PhD.

Larry Goldstein PhD, has many titles, one of which sums up his career perfectly, “Distinguished Professor”. Dr. Goldstein has distinguished himself on many fronts, making him an ideal addition to the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Dr. Goldstein – everyone calls him Larry – is a Cell Biologist, Geneticist and Neuroscientist. He worked with many colleagues to launch the UC San Diego Stem Cell program, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine and the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center. He has received the Public Service Award from the American Society for Cell Biology and has had a Public Policy Fellowship named for him by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and last year was named a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

“I look forward to working with the ICOC and CIRM staff to ensure that the best and most promising stem cell research and medicine is fostered and funded,” Larry said.

For more than 25 years Larry’s work has targeted the brain and, in particular, Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

In 2012 his team was the first to create stem cell models for two different forms of Alzheimer’s, the hereditary and the sporadic forms. This gave researchers a new way of studying the disease, helping them better understand what causes it and looking at new ways of treating it.

He was appointed to the CIRM Board by Pradeep Khosla, the Chancellor of U.C. San Diego saying he is “gratified you are assuming this important role.”

Jonathan Thomas, JD, PhD., Chair of the CIRM Board, welcome the appointment saying “I have known Larry for many years and have nothing but the highest regard for him as a scientist, a leader, and a great champion of stem cell research. He is also an innovative thinker and that will be invaluable to us as we move into a second chapter in the life of CIRM.”

Larry was born in Buffalo, New York and grew up in Thousand Oaks, California. He graduated from UC San Diego with a degree in Biology in 1976 and from the University of Washington with a Ph. D. in Genetics in 1980. He joined the faculty in Cell and Developmental Biology at Harvard University in 1984 where he was promoted to Full Professor with tenure in 1990. He returned to UC San Diego and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1993. After 45 years pursuing cutting edge lab-based research Larry is now transitioning to an administrative and executive role at UC San Diego where he will serve as the Senior Advisor for Stem Cell Research and Policy to the Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences.

He replaces David Brenner who is standing down after completing two terms on the Board.

A true Hall of Fame winner

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment
Dr. Larry Goldstein: Photo courtesy UCSD

You know you are working with some of the finest scientific minds in the world when they get elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It’s the science equivalent of the baseball, football or even Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. People only get in if their peers vote them in. It’s considered one of the highest honors in science, one earned over many decades of hard work. And when it comes to hard work there are few people who work harder than U.C. San Diego’s Dr. Lawrence Goldstein, one of the newly elected members of the NAS.

Dr. Goldstein – everyone calls him Larry – was the founder and director of the UCSD Stem Cell Program and the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UC San Diego Health and is founding scientific director of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine.

For more than 25 years Larry’s work has targeted the brain and, in particular, Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

In 2012 his team was the first to create stem cell models for two different forms of Alzheimer’s, the hereditary and the sporadic forms. This gave researchers a new way of studying the disease, helping them better understand what causes it and looking at new ways of treating it.

His work has also helped develop a deeper understanding of the genetics of Alzheimer’s and to identify possible new targets for stem cell and other therapies.

Larry was typically modest when he heard the news, saying: “I have been very fortunate to have wonderful graduate students and fellows who have accomplished a great deal of excellent research. It is a great honor for me and for all of my past students and fellows – I am obviously delighted and hope to contribute to the important work of the National Academy of Sciences.”

But Larry doesn’t intend to rest on his laurels. He says he still has a lot of work to do, including “raising funding to test a new drug approach for Alzheimer’s disease that we’ve developed with CIRM support.”

Jennifer Briggs Braswell, PhD, worked with Larry at UCSD from 2005 to 2018. She says Larry’s election to the NAS is well deserved:

“His high quality publications, the pertinence of his studies in neurodegeneration to our current problems, and his constant, unwavering devotion to the next generation of scientists is matched only by his dedication to improving public understanding of science to motivate social, political, and financial support.  

“He has been for me a supportive mentor, expressing enthusiastic belief in the likely success of my good ideas and delivering critique with kindness and sympathy.   He continues to inspire me, our colleagues at UCSD and other communities, advocate publicly for the importance of science, and work tirelessly on solutions for neurodegenerative disorders.”

You can read about Larry’s CIRM-supported work here.

You can watch an interview with did with Larry a few years ago.

Stem Cell Stories That Caught Our Eye: Free Patient Advocate Event in San Diego, and new clues on how to fix muscular dystrophy and Huntington’s disease

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment

UCSD Patient Advocate mtg instagram

Stem cell research is advancing so fast that it’s sometimes hard to keep up. That’s one of the reasons we have our Friday roundup, to let you know about some fascinating research that came across our desk during the week that you might otherwise have missed.

Of course, another way to keep up with the latest in stem cell research is to join us for our free Patient Advocate Event at UC San Diego next Thursday, April 20th from 12-1pm.  We are going to talk about the progress being made in stem cell research, the problems we still face and need help in overcoming, and the prospects for the future.

We have four great speakers:

  • Catriona Jamieson, Director of the CIRM UC San Diego Alpha Stem Cell Clinic and an expert on cancers of the blood
  • Jonathan Thomas, PhD, JD, Chair of CIRM’s Board
  • Jennifer Briggs Braswell, Executive Director of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center
  • David Higgins, Patient Advocate for Parkinson’s on the CIRM Board

We will give updates on the exciting work taking place at UCSD and the work that CIRM is funding. We have also set aside some time to get your thoughts on how we can improve the way we work and, of course, answer your questions.

What: Stem Cell Therapies and You: A Special Patient Advocate Event

When: Thursday, April 20th 12-1pm

Where: The Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, 2880 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037

Why: Because the people of California have a right to know how their money is helping change the face of regenerative medicine

Who: This event is FREE and open to everyone.

We have set up an EventBrite page for you to RSVP and let us know if you are coming. And, of course, feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested.

This is the first of a series of similar Patient Advocate Update meetings we plan on holding around California this year. We’ll have news on other locations and dates shortly.

 

Fixing a mutation that causes muscular dystrophy (Karen Ring)

It’s easy to take things for granted. Take your muscles for instance. How often do you think about them? (Don’t answer this if you’re a body builder). Daily? Monthly? I honestly don’t think much about my muscles unless I’ve injured them or if they’re sore from working out.

duchennes-cardiomyocytes-body

Heart muscle cells (green) that don’t have dystrophin protein (Photo; UT Southwestern)

But there are people in this world who think about their muscles or their lack of them every day. They are patients with a muscle wasting disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). It’s the most common type of muscular dystrophy, and it affects mainly young boys – causing their muscles to progressively weaken to the point where they cannot walk or breathe on their own.

DMD is caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. These mutations prevent muscle cells from making dystrophin protein, which is essential for maintaining muscle structure. Scientists are using gene editing technologies to find and fix these mutations in hopes of curing patients of DMD.

Last year, we blogged about a few of these studies where different teams of scientists corrected dystrophin mutations using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology in human cells and in mice with DMD. One of these teams has recently followed up with a new study that builds upon these earlier findings.

Scientists from UT Southwestern are using an alternative form of the CRISPR gene editing complex to fix dystrophin mutations in both human cells and mice. This alternative CRISPR complex makes use of a different cutting enzyme, Cpf1, in place of the more traditionally used Cas9 protein. It’s a smaller protein that the scientists say can get into muscle cells more easily. Cpf1 also differs from Cas9 in what DNA nucleotide sequences it recognizes and latches onto, making it a new tool in the gene editing toolbox for scientists targeting DMD mutations.

gene-edited-cardiomyocytes-body.jpg

Gene-edited heart muscle cells (green) that now express dystrophin protein (Photo: UT Southwestern)

Using CRISPR/Cpf1, the scientists corrected the most commonly found dystrophin mutation in human induced pluripotent stem cells derived from DMD patients. They matured these corrected stem cells into heart muscle cells in the lab and found that they expressed the dystrophin protein and functioned like normal heart cells in a dish. CRISPR/Cpf1 also corrected mutations in DMD mice, which rescued dystrophin expression in their muscle tissues and some of the muscle wasting symptoms caused by the disease.

Because the dystrophin gene is one of the longest genes in our genome, it has more locations where DMD-causing mutations could occur. The scientists behind this study believe that CRISPR/Cpf1 offers a more flexible tool for targeting different dystrophin mutations and could potentially be used to develop an effective gene therapy for DMD.

Senior author on the study, Dr. Eric Olson, provided this conclusion about their research in a news release by EurekAlert:

“CRISPR-Cpf1 gene-editing can be applied to a vast number of mutations in the dystrophin gene. Our goal is to permanently correct the underlying genetic causes of this terrible disease, and this research brings us closer to realizing that end.”

 

A cellular traffic jam is the culprit behind Huntington’s disease (Todd Dubnicoff)

Back in the 1983, the scientific community cheered the first ever mapping of a genetic disease to a specific area on a human chromosome which led to the isolation of the disease gene in 1993. That disease was Huntington’s, an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that typically strikes in a person’s thirties and leads to death about 10 to 15 years later. Because no effective therapy existed for the disease, this discovery of Huntingtin, as the gene was named, was seen as a critical step toward a better understand of Huntington’s and an eventual cure.

But flash forward to 2017 and researchers are still foggy on how mutations in the Huntingtin gene cause Huntington’s. New research, funded in part by CIRM, promises to clear some things up. The report, published this week in Neuron, establishes a connection between mutant Huntingtin and its impact on the transport of cell components between the nucleus and cytoplasm.

Roundup Picture1

The pores in the nuclear envelope allows proteins and molecules to pass between a cell’s nucleus and it’s cytoplasm. Image: Blausen.com staff (2014).

To function smoothly, a cell must be able to transport proteins and molecules in and out of the nucleus through holes called nuclear pores. The research team – a collaboration of scientists from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Florida and UC Irvine – found that in nerve cells, the mutant Huntingtin protein clumps up and plays havoc on the nuclear pore structure which leads to cell death. The study was performed in fly and mouse models of HD, in human HD brain samples as well as HD patient nerve cells derived with the induced pluripotent stem cell technique – all with this same finding.

Roundup Picture2

Huntington’s disease is caused by the loss of a nerve cells called medium spiny neurons. Image: Wikimedia commons

By artificially producing more of the proteins that make up the nuclear pores, the damaging effects caused by the mutant Huntingtin protein were reduced. Similar results were seen using drugs that help stabilize the nuclear pore structure. The implications of these results did not escape George Yohrling, a senior director at the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, who was not involved in the study. Yohrling told Baltimore Sun reporter Meredith Cohn:

“This is very exciting research because we didn’t know what mutant genes or proteins were doing in the body, and this points to new areas to target research. Scientists, biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies could capitalize on this and maybe develop therapies for this biological process”,

It’s important to temper that excitement with a reality check on how much work is still needed before the thought of clinical trials can begin. Researchers still don’t understand why the mutant protein only affects a specific type of nerve cells and it’s far from clear if these drugs would work or be safe to use in the context of the human brain.

Still, each new insight is one step in the march toward a cure.

Pushing, pulling and dragging stem cell research forward

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

Government agencies are known for many things, but generally speaking a willingness to do some voluntary, deep self-examination is not one of them. However, for the last few weeks CIRM has been doing a lot of introspection as we develop a new Strategic Plan, a kind of road map for where we are heading.

Patient Advocate meeting in Los Angeles: Photo courtesy Cristy Lytal USC

Patient Advocate meeting in Los Angeles:
Photo courtesy Cristy Lytal USC

But we haven’t been alone. We’ve gone to San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco to talk to Patient Advocates in each city, to get their thoughts on what we need to focus on for the future. Why Patient Advocates? Because they are the ones with most skin in the game. They are why we do this work so it’s important they have a say in how we do it.

As Chris Stiehl, a Patient Advocate for type 1 diabetes, said in San Diego: “Let the patient be in the room, let them be part of the conversation about these therapies. They are the ones in need, so let them help make decisions about them right from the start, not at the end.”

A Strategic Plan is, on the surface, a pretty straightforward thing to put together. You look at where you are, identify where you want to go, and figure out the best way to get from here to there. But as with many things, what seems simple on the surface often turns out to be a lot more complicated when looked at in more depth.

The second bit, figuring out where you want to go, is easy. We want to live up to our mission of accelerating the development of stem cells therapies to patients with unmet medical needs. We don’t want to be good at this. We want to be great at this.

Dr. C. Randal Mills talking to Patient Advocates in LA: Photo courtesy Cristy Lytal, USC

Dr. C. Randal Mills talking to Patient Advocates in LA: Photo courtesy Cristy Lytal, USC

The first part, seeing where you are, is a little tougher: it involves what our President and CEO, Dr. Randy Mills, “confronting some brutal facts”, being really honest in assessing where you are because without that honesty you can’t achieve anything.

So where are we as an agency? Well, we have close to one billion dollars left in the bank, we have 12 projects in clinical trials and more on the way, we have helped advance stem cells from a fledgling field to a science on the brink of what we hope will be some remarkable treatments, and we have a remarkable team ready to help drive the field still further.

But how do we do that, how do we identify the third part of the puzzle, getting from where we are to where we want to be? CIRM 2.0 is part of the answer – developing a process to fund research that is easier, faster and more responsive to the needs of the scientists and companies developing new therapies. But that’s just part of the answer.

Some of the Patient Advocates asked if we considered focusing on just a few diseases, such as the ten largest killers of Americans, and devoting our remaining resources to fixing them. And the answer is yes, we looked at every single option. But we quickly decided against that because, as Randy Mills said:

“This is not a popularity contest, you can’t judge need by numbers, deciding the worth of something by how many people have it. We are disease agnostic. What we do is find the best science, and fund it.”

Another necessary element is developing better ways to attract greater investment from big pharmaceutical companies and venture capital to really help move the most promising projects through clinical trials and into patients. That is starting to happen, not as fast as we would like, but as our blog yesterday shows things are moving in this direction.

And the third piece of the pie is getting these treatments through the regulatory process, getting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve therapies for clinical trials. And this last piece clearly hit a nerve.

Many Patient Advocates expressed frustration at the slow pace of approval for any therapy by the FDA, some saying it felt like they just kept piling up obstacles in the way.

Dr. Mills said the FDA is caught between a rock and a hard place; criticized if it approves too slowly and chastised if it approves too fast, green lighting a therapy that later proves to have problems. But he agreed that changes are needed:

“The regulatory framework works well for things like drugs and small molecules that can be taken in pills but it doesn’t work well for cellular therapies like stem cells. It needs to do better at that.”

One Advocate suggested a Boot Camp for researchers, drilling them in the skills they’ll need to get FDA approval. Others suggested applying political pressure from Patient Advocacy groups to push for change.

As always there are no easy answers, but the meeting certainly raised many great questions. Those are all helping us focus our thinking on what needs to be in the Strategic Plan.

Randy ended the Patient Advocate events by saying the stem cell agency “is in the time business. What we do is time sensitive.” For too many people that time is already running out. We have to do everything we can to change that.

Share your voice, shape our future

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

shutterstock_201440705There is power in a single voice. I am always reminded of that whenever I meet a patient advocate and hear them talk about the need for treatments and cures – and not just for their particular disease but for everyone.

The passion and commitment they display in advocating for more research funding reflects the fact that everyday, they live with the consequences of the lack of effective therapies. So as we at CIRM, think about the stem cell agency’s future and are putting together a new Strategic Plan to help shape the direction we take, it only makes sense for us to turn to the patient advocate community for their thoughts and ideas on what that future should look like.

That’s why we are setting up three meetings in the next ten days in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco to give our patient advocates a chance to let us know what they think, in person.

We have already sent our key stakeholders a survey to get their thoughts on the general direction for the Strategic Plan, but there is a big difference between ticking a box and having a conversation. These upcoming meetings are a chance to talk together, to explore ideas and really flesh out the details of what this Strategic Plan could be and should be.

Our President and CEO, Dr. C. Randal Mills wants each of those meetings to be an opportunity to hear, first hand, what people would like to see as we enter our second decade. We have close to one billion dollars left to invest in research so there’s a lot at stake and this is a great chance for patient advocates to help shape our next five years.

Every voice counts, so join us and make sure that yours is heard.

The events are:

San Diego, Monday, July 13th at noon at Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, 2880 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037

Los Angeles: Tuesday, July 14th at noon at Eli and Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, 1425 San Pablo Street, 1st floor conf. room Los Angeles, CA 90033

San Francisco: Wednesday, July 15th at noon at CIRM, 210 King Street (3rd floor), San Francisco, CA 94107

There will be parking at each event and a light lunch will be served.

We hope to see you at one of them and if you do plan on coming please RSVP to info@cirm.ca.gov

And of course please feel free to share this invitation to anyone you think might be interested in having their voice heard. We all have a stake in this.