The Niche

The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has collected a sixth country for its international collaborations. German and Californian scientists will be able to submit joint grants for collaborative projects that focus on immunology. Researchers would, however, be funded by their respective governments.

(See CIRM’s melting pot of collaborators)

At a signing ceremony in CIRM’s office in San Francisco, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Freider Meyer-Krahmer described the new memorandum of understanding as opening up “totally new ways of collaboration” with perhaps three or more countries coming together. “Not just the researchers but also the funders collaborate.”

CIRM president Alan Trounson said the agreement grew out of past meetings between German and Californian scientists who had identified ways that they wanted to work together, particularly on ways to understand how transplanted cells will interact with patients’ immune system. Officials declined to state the amount of funds that would be involved, but Trounson said that governments must commit a certain minimum amount of funds, on the order of $1 million to $2 million dollars to “make the paperwork worthwhile.”

The officials said that the collaboration would avoid duplication and allow researchers to capitalize on advantages within both jurisdictions. Both Trounson and CIRM chair Robert Klein praised German work conducting large clinical trials in adult stem cells.

Each government will conduct their own ratings of the submitted grants, said officials, but they would establish a mechanism to make sure that both CIRM and German granting agencies would be awarding grants to the same teams.

CIRM plans to pursue additional agreements in the near future, particularly with U.S. state governments that have allocated funds to stem cell research. Agreements are already in place with Australia, Canada, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Posted by Monya Baker on September 17, 2009
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Several sources of new bond funds might be coming into the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), but CIRM’s Don Gibbons emphasizes that none of them are yet “done deals.”

The first funds are expected to be allocated from $6.5 billion in tax-exempt bond sales that occurred through the state two weeks ago, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The state’s investment board is meeting on April 15th to decide how those funds will be distributed, and CIRM hopes some of those funds will be used to pay off some prior debt and to award $43 million pending for one of CIRM’s facilities grants, says Gibbons.

The state is scheduled to begin selling more bonds, this time taxable bonds, on April 20th, and CIRM hopes to use funds from those sales to cover new research and educational grants. But neither the amount to be sold nor its allocation has been determined yet, says Gibbons. “We’re not going to presuppose how much we’ll get.”

And CIRM is also moving ahead with plans to issue its own private bonds, says Gibbons. Under current law, any CIRM-funded projects that yield products will need to pay some portion of revenues back to the state. That requirement means that the bonds issued will have to be taxable. Such bonds, he says, might be easier to place privately than publicly.

As previously described in the Great Beyond, the state has authorized the sale of $400 million in private bonds by CIRM, and CIRM’s Board has met to discuss funding priorities, based on expectations that $100 million bonds would be sold. For example, it decided to delay funding of $40.6 million in grants awarded in January destined for graduate students, postdoctoral and clinical fellows already working in stem cell research labs.

Gibbons acknowledged the possibility that some programs might need to be scaled back, but said that CIRM was not obsessing over the bond sales. “The feeling here is that the money will come through for us when we need it. That someone will find a way.”

California’s plans to sell taxable bonds are described in The Bond Buyer . And the Los Angeles Times. I found both articles through the California Stem Cell Report, which has several posts on April 6 and 7 discussing how these funds might be applied to the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

See also a previous post on CIRM finances and private bond sales.

Posted by Monya Baker on April 08, 2009
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The governing board for the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine announced that it had decided to award $58 million to 26 grants for training stem-cell scientists and lab technicians. Delivery of these funds will have to wait, however, because California is unable to sell bonds on the public market. CIRM board members are even discussing raising funds through the private bond market. (See the press release as well as the story from the San Diego Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle )

Continue reading "CIRM training grants approved, but awards uncertain in financial climate" »

Posted by Monya Baker on February 02, 2009
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Posted on the Great Beyond for Natasha Gilbert

Reports in the British media that grant applications to create hybrid human – animal embryos for research were turned down on moral grounds, have been rejected by the funding bodies and scientists involved.

The story broke in the Independent newspaper on Monday, which claimed Stephen Minger, a leading stem cell scientist at King’s College London, said that the grant applications may have been blocked by scientists on the funding committees who are morally opposed to the creation of cloned hybrid embryos.

But when Nature spoke to Minger he said the Independent misinterpreted his comments, adding he did not have any evidence that moral objections led to his proposal being rejected.

“I was not saying that religious or moral opposition to the proposal led to its rejection,” he said.

Continue reading post on the Great Beyond

See a summary of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences Report describing issues around chimera research.

Also, a Lutheran divinity scholar making a theological case for chimeras

Posted by Monya Baker on January 14, 2009
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It’s now official that the head of California’s stem cell institute will receive a salary of $150,000 for what’s considered a part-time job. Another post could garner $300,000; the state’s budget deficit has led the California governor to dismay at approving any government salaries not essential to the institute’s mission. (See Nature’s news story available for subscribers, plus previous blog posts.

Meanwhile, the Broad’s generosity continues, reports the Los Angeles Times. This time with a $25 million donation to the stem cell center at the University of California, San Francisco. (The link is not broken, you just have to scroll way down; also see the California Stem Cell Report.) The charitable foundation previously made similar gifts to the University of California and the University of Southern California.

Posted by Monya Baker on December 18, 2008
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Salaries and appointments for CIRM officials
After lots of people (including me) indulged in headlines touting half-million suppositions, the CIRM board decided to pay Bob Klein $150,000 a year for what it deemed a half-time position. The San Francisco Business Times provides a nice overview, including the potential hiring of California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres for the vice-chair position at just over $300,000 per year, and Governor Schwarzenegger’s concerns about paying both these positions. The Sacramento Bee has an article on Torres.

Some companies get tools grants
In the last round of grants for creating new pluripotent stem cell lines, biotech companies cried foul that only applications from academics got the dough. (See What got funded.) They have less to complain about in this round. And while San Diego was bitterly disappointed that San Francisco (my fair city) won the seat of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, they should be cheered that four San Diego biotechs won grants. In addition, Duane Roth, one of the biggest “go-to” people in the San Diego biotech community, is reported to be Schwarzenegger’s pick for the vice-chair position eyed by Torres. XConomy reports that funds will soon be flowing to NovoCell for a pouch that can be used to transplant insulin-secreting cells without triggering an immune response, to Invitrogen (now known as the hard-to-Google “Life Technologies”) to use stem cells to model neurodegenerative disease, to Vala Sciences to make heart cells from stem cells, and to a joint effort by Fluidigm (which is in South San Francisco) and StemGent for techniques to find better ways to induce differentiated cells to pluripotency. The San Diego Tribune describes some funded technology more fully, along with the disappointments of one of the industry applicants that did not get funded. The two other companies to win grants were Gamma-Medica Ideas (with offices in Northridge, California, plus Norway and Canada) for ways to visualize single stem cells in the body and Vistagen (based in South San Francisco) for ways to use stem cells to screen drugs for potential liver toxicity.

Here is a list of the 23 grants awarded to 18 institutions, along with links to each application. Awarded funds totaled $19 million. This round of grants was targeted to develop technologies that could speed the development of therapies rather than become therapies themselves.

Posted by Monya Baker on December 12, 2008
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CIRM added yet another country to its list of collaborators, Spain, on December 3rd.
That’s the fifth country this year. The others are
Japan (Nov 18)
UK (Oct 20)
The Australian state, Victoria (June 18) and
Canada (June 18)

I went to the signing ceremony of the UK collaboration, where race-card-driver-turned-executive-turned-British-official Paul Drayson met with CIRM head Bob Klein to sign the three-page memorandum of understanding. They let me read it. It wasn't very specific.. Patent laws for each country would still apply, for instance. Though researchers will still apply for grants from their respective geographic locales, they will formally be able to name collaborators far, far away.

In other news, the chair of CIRM’s governing board, Robert Klein, may be seeking a salary of $508,750, according to the California Stem Cell Report. (See posts on Dec 1 and Dec 4). The folks over on King Street seem to be doing well, according to their salary schedule. Just before CIRM president Alan Trounson was hired at just under a half million dollars a year, I wrote an article chronicling the Institute’s search for a president and trolled through tax filing to find salaries of the scientific heads of several grant-giving agencies. (See that here, but note that the figures are a bit old.)

Posted by Monya Baker on December 05, 2008
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California’s stem cell funding agency signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Kingdom, expediting collaborations between scientists in the two locations.

Robert Klein, chair of the California Institute of Stem Cell Research and Lord Paul Drayson, UK’s Minister for Science, met in the San Francisco airport to sign the four-page document.

The thrust of the agreement is that Californian and British scientists can use funds supplied by CIRM or the UK’s Medical Research Council in formal collaborations, and would be able to describe such collaborations in requests for funding. A conference to bring researchers from the two locations together is planned for January of next year.

“We could do a one-off with an investigator in Paris, but that bogs us down,” says CIRM spokesman Don Gibbons. With the memorandum, CIRM can accept applications under the same rules and avoid bureaucracy.

Drayson and Klein were full of compliments for each other at the signing. Though no scientists or projects are named specifically in the memorandum, Klein emphasized that collaborations with the UK would allow researchers in California to tap into projects that were close to clinical trials, particularly cell therapies for blindness. Drayson said that the UK’s National Health System made his country particularly able to carry out clinical trials and gather clinical data.

Drayson said that most of the research pursued under the memorandum would be academic. However, he said that the UK could particularly benefit from the United States, particularly California’s ability to commercialize research.

This is at least the third international agreement announced by CIRM. In June, the agency signed agreements with Canada and with the Australian state of Victoria. Klein says similar and more-expanded announcements are forthcoming. Along with the National Institutes of Health and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, CIRM is part of three American members of the 21-member International Stem Cell Forum, which organizes cross-country collaborations between its member countries.

Posted by Monya Baker on October 21, 2008
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Credit crunch hurts California stem-cell facility
When the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine granted $271 million for building new laboratories, it had a few conditions. One was that research institutions had to come up with matching funds (see yesterday’s post on funds to Stanford). But one of the awardees, the Buck Institute for Age Research, has blamed the credit crunch for a stall in securing its share of the funds, according to an article in GenomeWeb. According to the article, nine of the grant recipients report that their building projects are moving ahead, and CIRM says it is too early to assess whether it should extend the deadline by which buildings must be completed.

Falsified data
Years before news that human skin cell could be reprogrammed to a state as powerful as embryonic stem cells, enthusiasm centered on potentially powerful cells in the bone marrow termed MAPCs (multipotent adult progenitor cells). Excitement dimmed when other researchers were unable to replicate the results. (This stands in sharp contrast to the reprogramming work, which has been repeated in multiple labs in multiple countries.) Now, a panel at the University of Minnesota reports that data was falsified in several figures. The investigation cleared the lead investigator in the lab, Catherine Verfaillie who is still retains a part-time U of M position but is now at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, and the blame falls to a graduate student in the lab.

The story was first reported in New Scientist, which had previously brough attention to discrepancies.

The University has asked that an article published in Blood be retracted and notes discrepancies but not falsification in another article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Other peer-reviewed articles are not mentioned in the materials made available to the media. (Nature issued a correction on related work in June last year, though authors say conclusions are still valid. See Flawed data in multipotent cell study and Stem-cell paper corrected.)

Here is an excerpt from the U of M statement:
In four of seven figures in the Blood paper, the panel concluded that aspects of the figures were altered in such a way that the manipulation misrepresented experimental data and sufficiently
altered the original research record to constitute falsification under federal regulations and University policy. Manipulations identified by the panel included: elimination of bands on blots, altered orientation of bands, introduction of lanes not included in the original figure, and covering objects or image density in certain lanes.

Posted by Monya Baker on October 07, 2008
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Cheaper genome scanning
Next year, the cost of sequencing a human genome will fall to $5000, according to start-up Complete Genomics in a story in The New York Times. The start-up expects that individual people will be the chief customers, but I’d imaging those characterizing stem cell lines wouldn’t mind getting some additional data, both about the existing variety of stem cell lines and about how individual stem cell lines change genetically as they adapt to culture. (See our commentary on how to assess a stem cell genome.)

Paperwork for embryo donors
Besides providing more genetic diversity, newly derived embryonic stem cell lines could be derived and maintained under better conditions for culture and informed consent. While recent surveys show individuals are willing to donate unwanted frozen embryos for research, an article in The Los Angeles Times describes some of the paperwork burdens involved.

Private money for Stanford stem-cell building
Meanwhile, BusinessWire founder Lorry Lokey is giving $75 million to Stanford for a stem-cell facility, according to the San Jose Business Journal. In the article, the Stanford Graduate and entrepreneur compares stem cells to the silicon chip. The total cost of the building will be $200 million, of which $44 million is coming from tax-payer funded California Institute of Regenerative Medicine; the university and other contributors are supposed to foot the rest of the bill.
Also, here’s a story from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by Monya Baker on October 06, 2008
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Maryland has just issued requests for proposals in stem cell research for a series of five-year grants for projects with supporting data plus two-year grants for more exploratory research. Graduate students and post-docs across the U.S. can apply to work in Maryland stem-cell labs for fellowships worth up to $55,000.

Elsewhere, initiatives to push stem-cell products toward commercialization are hitting snags. A few weeks after its head was ousted and its board resigned en masse, the Australian Stem Cell Centre has a new interim head and board of directors. (See The Age) The agency has been having a tumultuous time, sparked by debates over whether to follow basic or commercial research. Though a 2006 review of the centre gave it good marks, the ASCC board fired it head Stephen Livesey, after a negative review of the centre. He told an Australian newspaper, that he was frustrated by stakeholders’ skeptical attitudes toward commercialization. See Infighting clouds stem cell centre’s future .

The Australian quotes Alan Trounson, head of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, co-founded ASCC in 2002, said the organization “needed to restructure”. Ironically, the structure of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine is currently undergoing a review of its structure and efficacy. (See The Great Beyond ) CIRM itself is obligated to help stem cells become commercial therapies. It is offering a loan program for biotechs. Biotechs are also eligible to apply for grants which carry an obligation to pay some royalties to the state for commercialized products. At the same time, CIRM must make sure that these therapies will be accessible to Californians. On Monday, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bipartisan legislationguaranteeing access to Californians and making it easier for the agency to fund other sorts of research.

As possibilities for commercialization increase, so will the tumult.

Posted by Monya Baker on October 01, 2008
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Here are a couple grant opportunities to spend some time in another institution’s lab studying stem cells.

CIRM’s “bridges” award works only for folks in California. It funds internships for undergraduates and Master’s level students at for-profit companies and academic institutions. Funds totaling $18 million will be awarded to 10 California institutions, where they will cover a program director, ten interns a year, and other activities. Letters of intent are due on July 31. It’s available to accredited academic institutions that didn’t get CIRM’s shared laboratory grants. More details are available at CIRM.
(BTW: There’s also $48 million coming in funds for CIRM trainee grants, which are geared for more specialized young scientists for one to three years. It’s similar to the NIH program; letters of intent are due at the end of July.)

Another award will foster collaborations between the United Kingdom and the U.S. It pays up to 5000 pounds ($10,000 dollars) for travel and expenses. The funding is primarily available for group leaders and principal investigators, but “exceptional” postdocs will be considered. (All awardees have to fly economy class) Funds are being offered through the British consulate in San Francisco, but scientists based in anywhere in the US or the UK can apply. (I looked for and didn’t find eligibility requirements based on citizenship. Let me know if I missed something.) You need to apply by September 14th for notification on October 14th, and your travel needs to be concluded by February.

Posted by Monya Baker on July 09, 2008
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The California scientists most likely to receive state grants for making new cell lines were those who proposed comparing embryonic stem cell lines and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines. Overall, thirty-two percent of all grant applications (16 of 50) were funded. Four of the five grants that proposed comparisons got funds. The unfunded grant application crossed into less favored categories, as it also proposed making lines from parthenotes and through nuclear transfer. None of the grant applications that sought to make cell lines using human oocytes were funded. Two proposed cloning through nuclear transfer, one proposed stimulating unfertilized eggs to divide into parthenotes, and one application proposed using both methods.

Success rates for grants proposing the derivation of only ES or only iPS cells were each 33%, but there were twice as many grants for iPS cells. That’s astounding considering that the grant program was announced in October 2007, a month before the first publications that human cells could be successfully reprogrammed.

Four proposals to make pluripotent lines using cells derived from the placenta, testes, or amniotic fluid were rejected. But a proposal to make spermatagonial stem cells, ES cells, and iPS cells was funded and highly praised, with reviewers particularly keen to see a comparison of iPS and spermatagonial stem cells from the same individual.

Continue reading "What got funded: statistics on California’s new stem cell line grants" »

Posted by Monya Baker on July 02, 2008
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New York put together a draft plan for how to spent $600 million over 11 years to foster stem-cell research and is seeking input through June 20. You can read the plan and leave comments at the link above.

Below, I'll provide the budget breakdown for the plans for New York and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

Continue reading "New York’s strategic plan for stem cells seeks comments" »

Posted by Monya Baker on June 01, 2008
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