Thursday, December 13, 2012

Appeals at the California Stem Cell Agency: Worthwhile or Worthless?

Jon Shestack, a patient advocate member of the governing board of the California stem cell agency, weighed in today on the virtues of the grant application appeal process at the $3 billion research enterprise.

His remarks came in a “comment” filed on the Duchenne item that appeared yesterday on this site. (His full comment can be found at the end of that item.)

Shestack said that the handling of the $6 million CIRM grant involving Duchenne research is “a casebook study on why the special(extraordinary) petition is worthwhile. There was indeed new and relevant information that only became available after grant review. Scientific staff and leadership flagged it.”

The utility of the petitions is one of the reasons that we ran the story about Duchenne and the team at UCLA. The extraordinary petition process is currently under fire by both the Institute of Medicine and the stem cell agency itself, which has appointed a task force to come up with changes. But, while the petition process is certainly less than perfect, so is the peer review/grant review process.

The Duchenne application is not the only “case study.” An application by Karen Aboody of the City of Hope is often cited as another case. There are undoubtedly others.

The petition process was adopted several years ago by the board as a tool to manage willy-nilly appearances of scientists before the CIRM governing board whose applications were rejected by reviewers. Now the Institute of Medicine has recommended the petitions be abandoned, saying they undermine the integrity of grant review process. The IOM cited a major controversy in Texas involving its cancer research agency as an example of how grant reviews or the lack of them can go bad – not to mention conflict of interest problems there. CIRM has already started to look for better solutions regarding appeals. Many of its directors are troubled by emotional presentations from patients in connection with petitions and the lack of adequate information to make informed decisions on the spot about the contested matters.

Whether appeals can be put in a tidy, scientific box is debatable. Researchers have the right, under state law, to address the board on any issue whatsoever. And at least some of them will continue to do so -- regardless of any appeals changes --  when millions of dollars and their careers are at stake.

Opinions and decisions of CIRM reviewers are not holy writ. They can and do make mistakes, as we all do. In making changes in the appeals process, the goal of the agency should be to devise a public and transparent process rather than enshroud it in more secrecy. CIRM also should find a way to do a much better job of communicating to applicants the availability of appeals and precisely how to appeal when it becomes necessary.   

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