The Cancer Stem Cell Consortium (CSCC) is a partner in the 2012 Large-Scale Applied Research Project Competition of Genome Canada, in collaboration with the first phase of the Personalized Medicine Signature Initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Genome Canada is leading the research competition. An excerpt from Fact Sheet: The Potential of Personalized Medicine:

Funding of $67.5M will come from Genome Canada ($40 million), CIHR ($22.5 million) and the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium ($5 million). Projects will be funded for a maximum of four years. To qualify for funding, researchers must obtain matching funding that at is least equal to that provided through the competition, which will bring the total investment in this research area to close to $140 million. Matching funding is typically derived from provincial, academic, private sector or international sources.

Details about the competition are available here.

Press releases, dated January 31, 2012, about the federal government’s support for personalized medicine, are available here and here.

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I must admit that, the more I read about what stem cells — especially adult (or "tis-sue") stem cells that are not under the current res-trictions on the use of embryonic stem cells — the more I am incredibly impressed at the growing successful results of the use of such stem cells, especially in trials where they have been so successful in research and testing results literally around the …Source:
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?ei=UTF-8&p=stem+cells&eo=UTF-8

Mouse skin cells can be converted directly into cells that become the three main parts of the nervous system, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is an extension of a previous study by the same group showing that mouse and human skin cells can be directly converted into functional neurons.Source:
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?ei=UTF-8&p=IPS+stem+cells+therapy&eo=UTF-8

Led by researchers at University of Oxford (UK) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) at Harvard University, (USA), more than 50 collaborators at over 30 scientific organizations around the globe have agreed on a common standard that will make possible the consistent description of enormous and radically different databases compiled in fields ranging from genetics to stem cell science, to environmental studies. (2012-01-30)Source:
http://www.brightsurf.com/rss.news.xml?search=Stem_Cells

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The Center for Genetics and Society has filed a brief statement with the Institute of Medicine panel examining the performance of the California stem cell agency, expressing the hope that the inquiry will include “a broader range of sources.”

Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Berkeley group, said that “a meaningful review by (the IOM) committee could make an important contribution to needed changes at the agency.” Darnovsky’s organization has followed the stem cell effort since its inception.

She noted that CIRM is “a public agency spending increasingly scarce public resources” and has raised the possibility of seeking another multibillion dollar bond measure from voters.

The IOM inquiry has finished half of its public process and is yet to hear an independent analysis of the stem cell agency, which is paying $700,000 for the study.

Earlier Darnovsky told the California Stem Cell Report that the Institute of Medicine has not contacted her organization for comments, although she has spoken with the public relations person for the IOM.

Here is the text of Darnovsky’s statement sent to the IOM.

“The Center for Genetics and Society is a public interest organization working to ensure responsible uses and effective societal governance of human genetic and reproductive technologies.  We support embryonic stem cell research, but have been concerned for some years about a number of aspects of the field, and of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine in particular.

“We have been closely following CIRM since the campaign for Proposition 71 that established it in 2004. We have attended numerous meetings of the agency’s governing board and Standards Working Group, worked with other public interest groups who share our concerns about CIRM, written frequently about CIRM in our publications, and been cited dozens of times in articles about CIRM in key state and national news outlets.

“In 2006, we published The California Stem Cell Program at One Year: A Progress Report, which assessed CIRM’s performance to that date and offered recommendations. See http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/downloads/200601report.pdf

“In 2008, CGS policy analyst Jesse Reynolds gave invited testimony to the Little Hoover Commission’s hearing on CIRM. See http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=4386

“We are encouraged that the Institute of Medicine is undertaking an independent assessment of CIRM, though we hope that you will invite input from a broader range of sources than were represented at the meeting last month in San Francisco. With key questions about the future of CIRM unresolved, and its leadership contemplating a campaign for another bond measure.

“As I wrote in a recent commentary that expressed our disappointment with the roster of speakers at last month’s hearing,

“Ballot measure or no ballot measure, CIRM will continue to disperse the public money it controls – another billion and a half dollars. This is a public agency spending increasingly scarce public resources. It is funding a field of research in which we place great hopes for medical and scientific advances. These factors make it all the more crucial that CIRM follow the basics of good governance and public accountability, and eschew the hyperbole and exaggerated promises that have tainted stem cell research for so long.

“See  http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=6045

“Please let us know if we can be of help. We would be very glad to share our insights and recommendations.”

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Here is the text of questions from the California Stem Cell Report and answers from the Institute of Medicine concerning its plans to secure independent perspectives during the IOM’s examination of the California stem cell agency. So far, the IOM has not heard publicly from any independent sources.

Christine Stencel, a spokeswoman for the IOM, responded for the IOM. She first gave an overall statement. Then she answered the specific queries. We have inserted the questions from the California Stem Cell Report into her text  in order to make the Q&A easier to follow.

The IOM’s general comment:

“The committee and staff are planning their next info gathering sessions. Specifics of these events haven’t all been worked out yet, but one overall point is that the committee believes it is important to hear the full range of perspectives and experiences with CIRM and the committee members are actively pursuing sources of information that will allow them to adequately answer the questions they’ve been tasked to explore. The study is ongoing and there are still a lot of people and resources to tap and information to learn.

“To your specific questions:”

California Stem Cell Report:

“Does the IOM have plans to talk with or seek statements from such groups as the Little Hoover Commission and the Center for Genetics and Society or state Controller John Chiang?”

IOM response:

“Yes. And the committee is reading all the past reviews of CIRM.”

California Stem Cell Report:

“Does the IOM plan to seek comments from grant applicants rejected by CIRM, particularly businesses? If so how many? How would such applicants be selected by the IOM for interviews or comments?”

IOM response:

“Yes, the committee wishes to hear these perspectives and is seeking ways to get them.”

California Stem Cell Report:

“Does the IOM plan to do more than passively post forms for comment from others? Does it plan to email those forms, for example, to all CIRM grant recipients and applicants who were rejected? Does it plan to follow up to be sure an adequate response is generated?”

IOM response:

“The IOM is proactively working to get survey responses and encouraging people to respond.”

California Stem Cell Report:

“What does the IOM mean by ‘industry partners’ on its (online) forms for comment?”

IOM response:

“Industry partners means CIRM investigators representing for-profit companies.”

California Stem Cell Report:

“Does the IOM plan to examine both public and private complaints about conflicts of interest on the part of CIRM grant reviewers? By private, I mean written complaints to CIRM that the agency retains but has not made public.”

IOM response:

“The committee is looking into the grants review process and working to make sure that the members obtain all relevant insights and information. The committee members intend to invite people who can provide a broad range of experiences with and perspectives of CIRM to the upcoming meeting in April.”

The California Stem Cell Report later asked the IOM if it wanted to comment on a quote that we were considering using, which said,

“In the eyes of the IOM, scientists who draw funding from CIRM and other sources are ‘independent.’ They look at these things differently than regular people would.”

The IOM responded,

“As to the quote you sent, as a response we would just reiterate that the committee is methodically going about its task and during the course of the study aims to gather the full range of information, experiences, and insights relevant to CIRM from a full range of sources.”

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The blue-ribbon panel examining the performance of the $3 billion California stem cell agency is midway through its public process and is yet to hear from a single independent witness during its open sessions.

The panel’s report and recommendations are due this fall and are expected to have a major impact on the seven-year-old agency and its future.

So far, the IOM panel has heard only from employees or directors of the agency and persons representing institutions that have received $418 million in CIRM cash.

The panel of scientists and academics was put together by the prestigious Institute of Medicine under a $700,000 contract with the stem cell agency itself. At the 2010 meeting during which agency directors approved the contract, they expressed hope that the IOM panel’s findings would bolster public support for another multibillion dollar bond measure for the agency, which expects to run out of funds for new grants in 2017.

Last week, the California Stem Cell Report asked the IOM about its plans to gather independent or critical information about the stem cell agency’s performance. With only one more California public meeting scheduled, the IOM said that it is seeking the “full range of perspectives” but did not respond directly to questions about the specifics of how it is going to fulfill that task.

None of the four organizations in California that have an independent perspective on CIRM have been contacted by the IOM, the California Stem Cell Report has been told. They are the state’s Little Hoover Commission, the Center for Genetics and Society, Consumer Watchdog and the Citizens Financial Accountability and Oversight Committee, which is the only state body specifically charged with oversight of CIRM and its directors and which is chaired by the state’s top fiscal officer, Controller John Chiang. A spokeswoman for the IOM panel said, however, it plans to touch base with at least some of the four.

In response to questions from the California Stem Cell Report, Christine Stencel, the IOM spokeswoman, said the IOM also wants to hear comments from businesses whose applications have been rejected by CIRM. However, she said the panel is still working on “ways to get them.” She did not respond directly to questions about how many of such businesses would be interviewed or how they would be selected. The tiny number of CIRM grants to business is a sore spot with industry. Even directors and CIRM’s own “external review” panel have said much more is needed.

In response to a question about complaints about conflicts of interest on the part of CIRM reviewers, Stencel was also non-specific, saying only that the panel wants to “obtain all relevant insights.” She did not respond directly to a question about whether the panel would examine “private complaints” filed with CIRM by rejected applicants.

Currently the IOM has forms posted online that interested parties, if they know about the existence of the forms, can use to comment on CIRM. We asked whether the panel plans to do more than passively post the forms, specifically whether it plans to email them to all CIRM applicants who were rejected. We also asked about IOM plans to follow up to generate an adequate response. Stencel said the IOM is “proactively working” to get survey responses but did not say what specific steps it was taking.

Our comment?

The IOM has a well-deserved reputation for rigor and thoroughness. However, the IOM is all but unknown to 99 pecent of the public, which will be the ultimate consumer of its findings on the stem cell agency. The fact that the IOM is being paid $700,000 by CIRM will undoubtedly raise questions in the minds of some about IOM’s own objectivity. The panel itself consists of persons who have like-minded interests and sympathy with CIRM and its 485 grant recipients. No member of the panel is likely to publicly discourage more scientific research, even if CIRM is deemed to be failing to fulfill the voters expectations in 2004 when they created the agency. All the more reason to aggressively seek out those with contrary views about CIRM’s performances, if the IOM’s report is to have maximum credibility.

Earlier this week we heard from a knowledgeable and longtime observer of the research scene, who said that the IOM looks at things “differently than regular people” and views scientists who receive funding from CIRM as “independent.” The IOM’s Stencel responded by reiterating that the IOM is seeking the full range of information from the full range of sources.

The IOM evaluation of CIRM’s performance is much too far along not to have progressed further with its attempts to hear from independent and critical voices about CIRM. Generalizations to the effect that “we are going to get to it” do not serve the panel well. The IOM should lay out publicly and quite specifically its plans to aggressively seek thoughtful analysis from parties that do not have financial or professional links to CIRM, as well as from those who feel they have received a short shrift from the $3 billion enterprise.

You can read the full text of the questions from the California Stem Cell Report and the IOM responses here.

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The prestigious journal Nature today said that asking California voters for more billions for stem cell research in a few years “may strike residents as a luxury that they can ill afford.”

The comment came in a piece by Erika Check Hayden dealing with the future of the California stem cell agency, which is expected to run out of money for new grants in about 2017. She wrote,

“Given that California is facing severe budget shortfalls, several billion dollars more for stem-cell science may strike residents as a luxury that they can ill afford. It may also prove difficult for CIRM’s supporters to point to any treatments that have emerged from the state’s investment. So far, the agency has funded only one clinical trial using embryonic stem cells, and that was halted by its sponsor, Geron of Menlo Park, California, last November.

“Yet the institute has spent just over $1 billion on new buildings and labs, basic research, training and translational research, often for projects that scientists say are crucial and would be difficult to get funded any other way. So the prospect of a future without CIRM is provoking unease. ‘It would be a very different landscape if CIRM were not around,’ says Howard Chang, a dermatologist and genome scientist at Stanford University in California.”

Chang was a scheduled witness recently at a public meeting in California of the blue-ribbon Institute of Medicine panel examining the performance of the Golden State’s $3 billion stem cell research effort. Chang is the recipient of $3.2 million in CIRM funding. Hayden wrote,

“Chang has a CIRM grant to examine epigenetics in human embryonic stem cells, and is part of another CIRM-funded team that is preparing a developmental regulatory protein for use as a regenerative therapy. Both projects would be difficult to continue without the agency, he says. Federal funding for research using human embryonic stem cells remains controversial, and could dry up altogether after the next presidential election (see Nature 481, 421–423; 2012). And neither of Chang’s other funders — the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland — supports his interdisciplinary translational work. Irina Conboy, a stem-cell engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, who draws half of her lab’s funding from CIRM, agrees that in supporting work that has specific clinical goals, the agency occupies a niche that will not easily be filled by basic-research funders. ‘The NIH might say that the work does not have a strong theoretical component, so you’re not learning anything new,’ she says.”

Conboy was also a scheduled witness at the IOM hearing. She holds $2.2 million in CIRM grants.

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