StemCell Therapy

On July 26, the agency's governing
board okayed $151 million for eight scientists during a day filled
with emotional testimony from patients, as well as appeals by
researchers seeking reconsideration of rejection by grant reviewers
at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The board also
asked reviewers to take a fresh look at five applications in its signature disease team round.

However, the board failed to act on
eight applications, meaning that they are still pending. Normally the
board will approve -- as a group -- one set of applications. Then, at
the same meeting, it will vote to reject another set of applications.
On July 26, however, the hard-pressed directors late in the
afternoon lost the supermajority quorum (65 percent) required to do
business and adjourned without acting on all the applications.

This situation rarely occurs on award
rounds. In our recollection, it has happened only once before
although there may have been other occasions.

That leaves an opening for more
researchers to ask the board to act favorably at its Sept. 5-6 meeting in San Francisco on applications rejected by reviewers. Money
is available. The July 26 round was budgeted for $243 million.

At the meeting last month, discussion
by directors provided several clues to appropriate avenues for
reconsideration. They were interested in appeals, formally called
extraordinary petitions, that brought genuinely new information to
the table. Serious errors in the reviews – something more than
differences of opinion – were of interest. Wide variance in the
spread of scientific scores on specific applications, including the
preliminary scores, also triggered directors' interest.

Researchers considering appeals would
be well-advised to listen to the audiocast of the meeting to hear the
discussion of appeals. The transcript of the meeting also should be
posted soon on the CIRM website, probably this week. The transcript
can be found via this page when it is posted. The audiocast
instructions can be found on the July 26 meeting agenda.

(The best available information on the
CIRM web site shows a Sept. 5-6 governing board meeting. However,
that schedule also shows other two day meetings earlier this year,
which actually have turned out to be only one day.)