The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state stem cell agency, and two international partners have awarded more than $250 million to 14 multidisciplinary teams of researchers in California, the U.K., and Canada to develop stem cell-based therapies for 11 diseases. The Disease Team Research Awards include approximately $8 million from the U.K.’s Medical Research Council and approximately $35 million from Canada’s Cancer Stem Cell Consortium to fund the international portions of the collaborations. The four-year grants mark the first CIRM funding explicitly expected to result in a filing with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a clinical trial. The awards fund research teams that include basic scientists and clinicians from both academia and industry. These collaborations are expected to speed the process of establishing clinical trials by insuring that clinically relevant issues are considered early and avoiding potential safety issues being discovered late in the process.
Alan Trounson, president of CIRM, says the pace of the Disease Team projects stands in contrast to the decade or more that’s usually required to reach clinical trials. “By encouraging applicants to form teams composed of the best researchers from around the world, we think CIRM will set a new standard for how translational research should be funded,” he says. CIRM and the agency’s international partners will actively manage each team, and decisions to move a project forward will be made at key points in the development cycle. The teams are targeting leukemia and solid cell tumors, acute myeloid leukemia, age-related macular degeneration, HIV/AIDS, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, sickle cell anemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and epidermolysis bullosa.
Source: Bioresearch Online