Will a Family Living in Happy Camp, California, Be Able to Easily Access Gene Therapies?

Accessibility and affordbillity are big issues for the $12 billion CIRM.

Concerned about the affordability of multimillion-dollar gene therapies? Worried about whether patients living in the farthest reaches of remote areas of California will have access to the revolutionary treatments?

You can address those issues next month before a body that is legally charged with dealing them, at least in California and at least involving potential therapies financed by California taxpayers at a projected cost of $12 billion.

The body is the Treatment and Cures Accessibillity and Affordability Working Group of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which was created by voters in 2004.

It is the only publicly funded research program in the nation legally required to “establish and oversee” programs to help make its commercialized stem cell and gene therapies “available and affordable” for all Californians.