President’s letter
Alan Trounson,
Ph.D.

Therapies in
our sight

We adopted a revised strategic plan this year that refines and re-enforces our founding goals: developing therapies to relieve human suffering. That plan reacts to the rapid evolution of stem cell science, incorporates more closely the biotechnology sector and positions the agency to further accelerate the path to therapies.

Our funding actions this year make clear we are already heeding the goals laid out in our new strategic plan. We ended the year with 77 projects in the later stages of translation for clinical use. This represents an 80 percent increase in these clinically directed projects in just one year.

We closed out the year with a round of grants designed to further hasten the pace to the clinic. We made a dozen New Faculty awards to junior faculty who are both physicians and scientists and understand the lab and the clinic. They are often key to moving therapies forward.

The year also saw another round of Basic Biology awards. Those fund transforming new ideas that are changing the stem cell field and will eventually result in novel approaches for the therapies that motivated all those who supported the creation of CIRM.

Alan Trounson

Chair’s letter
Jonathan Thomas, J.D., Ph.D.

Celebrating
Science

My excitement about this year’s progress was neatly summarized by a “Celebration of Science” event I attended in Washington D.C.. It highlighted the inexorable march of scientific achievement over the past decades and the role biology plays in improving the world. In creating CIRM, the voters of California have made the state the epicenter of the regenerative medicine revolution promising to accelerate that historic march toward new and better therapies.

Our expanding portfolio of projects is funding 60 institutions and companies looking to conquer no fewer than 31 currently incurable diseases or conditions, aiming to deliver on the technology’s promise to all those patients in desperate need of therapies or cures. A principal goal going forward is to connect our groundbreaking scientists with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, which could provide additional funds and ultimately bring cellular therapies to market. This process is well underway, with several CIRM-funded clinical trials expecting to enroll their first patients this year.

While we can’t guarantee success, we feel with each passing year that we’re getting closer to profound results that would have an enormous impact on the citizens of California, the nation, and the world.

Jonathan Thomas

Progress Toward Therapies

In the past year, we’ve increased the number of projects headed toward patients by 80%.

Accomplishments

Funds leveraged from private donors/institutions: $884M read more

Follow-on research funds from NIH, etc: $379M read more

Funds leveraged from collaborative partners: $75M read more

Job-years forecast by 2014: 38,000 read more

Tax revenues forecast by 2014: $286M read more

Stories of Hope

Throughout the year we hear from people who have benefited from stem cell therapies or who are still waiting for cures. These are their stories.