CIRM's Multibillion Dollar Spending Priorities: Affordability and Accessibility on Table Tomorrow

How can $3 million treatments be afforded by patients?

Word cloud based on CIRM’s priorities documents. CSCR graphic

More than three years ago, California voters ordered the state’s cell and gene therapy research agency to find ways to make the revolutionary cures it was pursuing affordable and accessible. 

Tomorrow afternoon, the agency once again addresses that mandate as part of its wide-ranging review of its priorities for spending its last uncommitted $3.5 billion. CIRM’s decisions are likely to have a major impact on researchers, patient advocates, and the causes they support during the next few years.

Tomorrow’s online, public stage is a meeting of the accessibility and affordability group of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). It will focus on the goal of ensuring that every completed, “advanced (CIRM) clinical trial has a strategy to enable access and affordability for all Californians, particularly underserved populations.”

CIRM seeks not just platitudes but “measurable success metrics” for dealing with costs that already exceed $4 million for a single, “one-and-done” treatment.