Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder and Advisory Board at Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“David Jensen is a retired newsman and has covered CIRM for 20 years on his newsletter, the California Stem Cell Report. He authored the book, ‘California’s Great Stem Cell Experiment’ in 2020.
LOS ANGELES (by David Jensen) ‘California’s stem cell and gene therapy program awarded more than $73 million yesterday for research on treatments and cures for afflictions ranging from rare diseases to hearing loss and Down syndrome.’
The 23 awards are for basic research that will take years to result in a widely usable therapy, if ever. More than 370 scientists applied for the awards.
The $12 billion stem cell agency, which is funded only through 2030, said that the ‘early-stage research (is) intended to spark the new ideas and tools that are the first step in developing novel disease therapies.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) said it ‘increased funding allocated to this round of grants from $37 million to $74 million in June in response to research funding cuts affecting California institutions.’
The boost increased CIRM’s research funding to a record $500 million this fiscal year. CIRM has $3.5 billion available for research spending but is legally entitled to only $540 million annually from state bonds.
‘Groundbreaking treatments for disease do not arise out of thin air’ CIRM said in a news release.
‘Each of the 116 clinical trials CIRM has funded to date began with an idea or discovery that came out of research much like those proposed in the DISC0 projects, including trials for epilepsy and blindness that originated from CIRM-funded discovery research. The DISC0 projects funded today lay the groundwork for therapies tomorrow.’
Not only did the award round attract a large number of applicants, but CIRM’s award reviewers approved more applicants than could be funded under CIRM’s budget. The California Stem Cell Report will have more later on how that financial issue was overcome.’
John Gurdon (whom I met in Cambridge and visited his MRC Cambridge University laboratory, thanks to my friend and his PhD student Doug Merton– both of us were playmakers/guards for Cambridge University Basketball team 1978/80) is regarded as the father of modern regenerative medicine but as far as I know (certainly not with me or during our conversations) never did open therapeutic proselytism for the clinical applications of regenerative medicine.
While together in Cambridge, at Papworth Hospital (relatively near Addenbrookes Hospital ) they started successful Cyclosporine protected kidney transplant surgery and mini organs growing out of autologous cells and stem cells were obviously on the cards , but I suspect he was as a pure scientist and he was naturally more interested in the mechanisms, and potentials (of gene expression regulation mainly at transcription levels) rather than specific clinical applications.
Doug Melton opted for the pancreas to cure type I diabetes mellitus.
While myself was more concerned with cancer and growth factors.”
Read more posts featuring Miguel Bronchud on OncoDaily.