From Parkinson's to Stroke: A CIRM Report Card on Progress and More than $1 Billion in Taxpayer Spending

The portfolio analysis is to be used to set new priorities

This chart deals only with a portion of CIRM’s neuro portfolio.

California’s neuro disease awards fest -- a $1.5 billion effort -- resumes next week with a sweeping look at the scope of its research, which projects are headed for the clinic, and which are likely to reach patients the soonest. 

Upfront is the first-ever portfolio analysis of its kind at the $12 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which finances stem cell and gene therapy research. Known as the stem cell agency, CIRM is the largest regenerative medicine institute in the world.  

In 2020, California voters formally added gene therapies to its charter and also mandated that the 19-year-old enterprise devote $1.5 billion to neuro disease research. CIRM’s neuro disease task force, chaired by CIRM board member Larry Goldstein, a UC San Diego researcher, is still working on setting priorities for spending the $1.5 billion.

Next Friday, the task force will consider the implications of CIRM’s work so far, and the public is welcome to comment and listen in. (See agenda for directions.) However, eighteen pages of slides that tell much of the story of CIRM’s neuro funding over the past 19 years are available today. For legal and other reasons, however, the agency did not really begin heavy-duty funding until 17 years ago.

The figures show that CIRM awarded $1.1 billion for neuro disease work through last year. Neurodegenerative diseases shared $327.8 million of the total. Neuro awards overall totaled 185. Neurodegenerative awards totaled 111. 

None of the neuro awards have advanced to the phase three clinical trial stage,