Foundation – Discovery Stage Research Projects

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Objective

The mission of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is to accelerate world class science to deliver transformative regenerative medicine treatments in an equitable manner to a diverse California and world. The objective of the Discovery Program is to support exploratory research leading to the discovery of novel stem cell technologies to improve patient care.

DISC 0: Foundation Awards

The Foundation Awards Program supports rigorous studies addressing critical basic knowledge gaps in the biology of stem cells and regenerative medicine approaches and to advance stem cell-based tools. Projects funded through the Foundation Awards should propose impactful or innovative research that culminates in a discovery or technology that would advance our understanding of the biology of stem or progenitor cells (collectively, “stem cells”) that is relevant to human biology and disease, or advance the application of genetic research that is relevant to human biology and disease and pertains to stem cells and regenerative medicine, or advance the development or use of human stem cells as tools for biomedical innovation, or lead to the greater applicability of regenerative medicine discoveries to communities representing the full spectrum of diversity. While CIRM intends to issue this Program Announcement for Foundation Awards to broadly re-initiate funding of basic stem cell science and genetic research, future DISC0 Program Announcements will be adjusted to align with collaborative infrastructure needs.

Please see the Funding Opportunities for Discovery Stage Research for the Program Announcement, application deadline and other details. 

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To Submit an Application:

1. Go to the Grants Management Portal (https://grants.cirm.ca.gov) and log in with your existing CIRM Username and Password. If you do not have a Username, Click on the “New User” link and follow the instructions to create a CIRM Username and password.
2. After logging in, select the tab labeled “Open Programs”. Under the section labeled “RFAs and Programs Open for Applications”, click on the applicable link to Start a DISC Grant Application.
3. Complete each section of the Application by clicking on the appropriate link and following the posted instructions. Proposal templates can be located and submitted under the “Uploads” section.
4. To submit your Application, click on the “Done with Application” button. The “Done with Application” button will be enabled when all of the mandatory sections have been completed. Please note that once this has been selected, you will no longer be able to make changes to your Application.
5. To confirm submission of your Application, select the tab labeled “Your Applications” and check the table under the section labeled “Your Submitted Applications”. You will see your Application number and project title listed once the submission process has been completed.

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Awards

Institution	Investigator	Grant Title	Award Value
Stanford University	Xiaojie Qiu	Mapping and modeling endothelial cell fate decisions for pulmonary arterial hypertension	$1,540,798
Gladstone Institutes, J. David	Dr. Steve M. Finkbeiner	Lewy body dementia, 𝛼-synuclein, and cell-specific mechanisms of neurodegeneration	$1,739,760
Minutia, Inc.	Katy Digovich	Immune cloaking of human stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells for curative cell therapy without immunosuppression	$1,192,586
University of California, San Francisco	Tomasz Nowakowski	Neuroimmune interactions in the developing human brain	$1,626,000
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. M. Carrie Miceli	Interrogating Satellite Cell and Myofiber Defects and Repair in Human DMD using Single Nuclei/Single Cell RNA Sequencing of Muscle Resident Cells	$1,578,000
University of California, San Diego	Dr Marianna Alperin	Harnessing the rejuvenating capacity of pregnancy-associated factors to restore aged stem cell function	$1,539,520
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute	Aniruddha Deshpande	Investigating the SGF29/SAGA complex in regulation of normal and cancer stem cells	$1,547,999
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Tyler Mark Pierson	Modeling of GATAD2B-associated neurodevelopmental disorder and NuRDopathies: Investigation of cellular & molecular anomalies altering neurodevelopment	$1,318,441
University of California, Los Angeles	Michael F Wells	Village-based identification of human risk factors for viral neuropathogenesis	$1,577,448
City of Hope, Beckman Research Institute	Qiong Annabel Wang	Utilizing Age-Specific Adipocyte Progenitor Cells for Cell Therapy in Older Patients	$1,508,997
Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor – UCLA Medical Center	Denise Al Alam PhD	Modeling and understanding alveolar hypoplasia in Down syndrome using iPSCs-derived alveolar type II cells	$1,524,196
University of California, San Francisco	Faranak Fattahi	hPSC-derived enteric ganglioids for cell therapy in gastrointestinal motility disorders	$1,589,307
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. William Lowry Dr.	Defining the source of dysfunction in monogenic Intellectual Disability Syndrome neurons	$1,500,337
University of California, Santa Cruz	Maximilian Haeussler	An interactive data resource for hypothesis testing in stem cell single-cell gene expression and validation of the results with brain organoids	$1,160,126
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Kathrin Plath Dr.	Characterization and applications of human blastoids for understanding early human embryogenesis	$1,402,137
University of California, San Francisco	Tien Peng	Ex vivo fate mapping of human lung stem cell plasticity in fibrotic disease	$1,625,998
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Brigitte N Gomperts	Overcoming barriers for airway stem cell gene therapy for Cystic Fibrosis	$1,472,858
University of California, San Francisco	Erik Ullian	Modeling Retinitis Pigmentosa using patient-derived human iPSC organoids	$1,380,543
University of California, Irvine	Albert La Spada Ph.D.	Role of ataxin-3 polyadenylation site selection in ALS neuron toxicity and disease pathogenesis	$1,514,416
University of California, Irvine	Dr. Brian J. Cummings	Mapping the spatial and temporal responses of hESC-derived microglia to repeat mild closed head injury to identify therapeutic targets and mechanisms	$1,339,685
University of California, San Francisco	Tomasz Nowakowski	Identifying roadblocks to neural stem cell transplantation into human tissues.	$1,551,394
Scripps Research Institute	Xin Jin	Functional genomics to study cellular convergence across ASD risk genes in neurodevelopment	$1,575,001
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Gay Miriam Crooks	Engineering pluripotent stem cells for universally available, off-the-shelf T cell therapies	$1,352,753
University of California, San Diego	Dr. Alon Goren	Establishment of a novel approach to systematically study the dynamic organization of protein complexes in stem cells	$1,515,601
University of California, San Francisco	Dr. Elizabeth Crouch	Harnessing vascular stem cells to grow and protect the human brain	$1,391,998
University of California, Santa Cruz	Dr. Camilla Forsberg	Determining how age-specific heterogeneity of human hematopoietic stem cells and megakaryocyte progenitors contribute to thrombotic disease upon aging	$1,336,800
University of California, San Francisco	Yin Shen PhD	Understanding Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Mechanisms using CRISPRi and Chemical Screens in Human iPSC-Derived Sensory Neurons	$1,621,913
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Dmitriy Sheyn	The role of WNT and BMP signaling pathways in iPSC to iTenocyte step-wise differentiation for tendon repair	$1,516,563
Gladstone Institutes, J. David	Julia Kaye	Developing a Human Model of Sporadic ALS Using Machine Learning and Robotic Microscopy	$1,406,622
Greenstone Biosciences, Inc.	Dr. Mukhtar Mukhtar Ahmed	Drug Discovery for Dilated Cardiomyopathy using Patient-Derived Human iPSCs	$1,350,000
Stanford University	Dr. Marius Wernig MD, PhD	Developing a microglia replacement therapy	$1,378,365
University of California, San Diego	Heidi Cook-Andersen	Towards a trophectoderm stem-cell model representing human blastocysts of the highest implantation potential	$1,584,000
University of California, San Diego	Dr. Alexis Komor	Development of a stem-cell based approach to interpret global effects of genetic variants contributing to neurodevelopmental disease risk	$1,518,982
University of California, San Francisco	Dr. Robert Blelloch MD, PHD.	Development of universal off-the-shelf iPSC derived dendritic cells for use as patient specific anti-tumor vaccine	$1,391,999
University of California, Berkeley	Dr. Michael P. Rapé Dr.	Control of OCT4 abundance and function in human stem cells	$1,234,023
University of California, San Francisco	Harold A. Chapman	Modulation of human alveolar stem cells to promote lung regeneration and avoid pulmonary fibrosis	$1,626,001
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr Melissa Jan Spencer	Engineering AAV capsids for transduction of neural and muscle stem cells	$999,999
University of California, San Diego	Francesca Soncin	Drivers of trophoblast stem/progenitor cell identity in human placenta	$993,881
University of California, Irvine	Momoko Watanabe	Generation of cortical organoids with tunable areal identities by spatial engineering of morphogens	$0
			Total: $55,025,047.00