Mouse Breeding Plan Receives $3.8 Million from CIRM

SAN DIEGO – The California stem cell agency this morning approved a $3.8 million grant to breed special mice in the Sacramento area to be used by stem cell researchers.

The vote on the grant was 19-1.

Jackson Laboratory, the grant applicant, said in its application,

“The lack of mouse models of disease in which the immune system has been suppressed significantly hinders the efforts of investigators in California and elsewhere to develop new HuSC-based disease therapies. An additional impediment is the lack of efficient access to the quantities of mice required for such studies, and to mice whose health, reproducibility, and research effectiveness has been assured. In the proposed project at (Jackson), we will develop multiple state-of-the-art, immune-deficient mouse models of human disease that can be used for testing HuSC therapies, and we will establish the production processes for making these models readily available to California researchers.”

Reviewers earlier recommended approval of the grant if funds were available. But they were sharply split in their scores they assigned to the grant.

Marie Csete, chief scientific officer for CIRM, made a case for approval of the grant, saying it would aid researchers. Board member Ed Penhoet, a co-founder of Chiron, said the grant was a “good investment.”

The mouse grant was the only one approved out of the “tier two” applications for early translational grants.