CIRM Could Receive $40M in Donations Within a Month

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine could receive $40 million in philanthropic loans within the next 30 days, CIRM Chair Robert Klein said on Friday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Klein, who spoke at a dedication ceremony for The Stem Cell Research Center at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, said the state Office of the Treasurer is completing paperwork to issue at least $40 million in bond anticipation notes. However, Klein would not confirm whether he reached his $50 million goal for philanthropic donations to the institute, and he declined to name the donors.

The donors will be repaid only if CIRM wins lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 71, which voters approved in November 2004 to fund stem cell research (Somers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/4).

Opinion Piece, Editorial

Summaries of a recent opinion piece and editorial addressing California's stem cell research program appear below.

Arnold Kriegstein/Keith Yamamoto, San Francisco Chronicle: Proposition 71 "has not yet contributed a penny to research," but "its passage has galvanized the field" of stem cell research in California, Kriegstein, director of the University of California-San Francisco Institute for Stem Cell and Tissue Biology, and Yamamoto, executive vice dean of UCSF's School of Medicine, write in a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece. Kriegstein and Yamamoto write that they "are confident the funding from the newly established CIRM will ultimately become available." However, even if CIRM loses lawsuits challenging the law, scientists will continue research efforts through industry partnerships and philanthropic donations, Kriegstein and Yamamoto write (Kriegstein/Yamamoto, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/3).
San Francisco Examiner: CIRM last week took "a laudable step forward in dealing with the thorniest ethical issues of stem cell research" by issuing draft ethical guidelines, an Examiner editorial states. Noting the controversy over stem cell research in South Korea, the editorial states that CIRM "appears to be making good progress toward reducing the potential of scientific malfeasance" (San Francisco Examiner, 2/6).

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