New CEO for $12 Billion, California Stem Cell Agency Expected on July 9
Three finalists to be interviewed then by full CIRM boad, decision made
BURLINGAME, Ca. -- The long-running search for a new president and CEO of the $12 billion California stem cell and gene therapy program could be over in less than two weeks.
A conclusion couldn’t come sooner. The selection of a new president comes at a watershed moment in the program’s nearly 20-year history. The agency is in the midst of a sweeping review of its funding and research priorities that is scheduled to conclude in late September.
The reevaluation could result in changes that will affect researchers, patients and their advocates, who are desperately seeking more funding for diseases that are ravaging themselves or their friends and family.
Just yesterday, 1,005 people petitioned the agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), to finance rare disease research with more billions.
CIRM’s priority review -- dubbed the Strategic Allocation Framework by CIRM -- could be the key to generating results that would resonate with voters who created CIRM in 2004. The ballot initiative campaign raised expectations that revolutionary therapies were just around the corner.
CIRM has yet to help finance a stem cell therapy that is available to the general public.
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