Peering into CIRM's Past: A $243 Million Recollection About Generating Stem Cell Candidates for Clinical Trials

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It’s the holiday season, and giving is the order of the day. At California’s $12 billion stem cell and gene therapy agency, it is the order of the day 365 days a year.

The amount of the giving can seem staggering at times. Fourteen years ago, the agency likely set a record when, during a two-day meeting, it launched plans to award $243 million in research spending.

Below is a look back at what happened that day in a meeting room in Paul Brest Hall at Stanford University as reported by the California Stem Cell Report in 2010. Note that the CEO of the agency, then Alan Trounson, resisted the size of the spending.

Coincidentally, this was the meeting where CIRM directors authorized a study of CIRM by what is now the National Academy of Medicine despite prescient warnings that results might not be a resounding endorsement of the agency. Then chairman Robert Klein said it was important to approve the study, which ultimately cost $700,000, to satisfy the voters who created the Golden State’s agency in 2004.