Guy Sauvageau, founder and CEO, of ExcellThera.
The firm was awarded $2 million today for a
clinical trial for sickle cell disease. Video from
Meeting on the Mesa, October 2019
The California stem cell agency this morning awarded $2 million for research to treat sickle cell disease plus another $1 million to assist in the battle against Covid-19, which has killed 304,000 persons worldwide and 2,934 in California.
The sickle cell award went to a Canadian firm, ExcellThera, Inc., that is conducting a clinical trial involving the disease, which afflicts as many as 100,000 Americans, principally African-Americans. The firm is providing $857,143 in matching funds.
Pierre Caudrelier, chief medical officer at the Montreal firm, is using umbilical cord stem cells from healthy donors, which could help solve the issue of matching and availability of sickle cell treatments. The location of the California work is not yet known.
Winners in today's Covid round are:
Michael Matthay at UC San Francisco, $750,000, to assist in a clinical trial to develop an injectable biomaterial platform that
can induce T memory stem cells and boost immunoactivation to vaccines
against SARS-CoV-2, which will help protect elderly people. The trial also involves UC Davis. (application number CLIN2COVID19-11823)
Stuart Lipton at Scripps Research Institute, $150,000, to develop a drug that is both anti-viral and protects the brain against coronavirus-related damage. (application number DISC2COVID19-11811)
Justin Ichida at the USC, $150,000, to determine if a drug called a kinase inhibitor can protect stem cells in the lungs, which are selectively infected and killed by the novel coronavirus. (application number DISC2COVID19-11901)
The three Covid-19 awards today leave about $2.9 million in the Covid-19 round. It has rolling application deadlines that surface every two weeks with next coming next Tuesday.
In addition to Matthay, two of the 12 Covid-19 applicants filed appeal letters with the CIRM governing board. They are Song Li of UCLA, appeal letter, and Celularity Inc., of New Jersey, appeal letter.
The CIRM governing board rejected Li's and Celularity's applications, but they may resubmit them next Tuesday with modifications. Their scores and rankings can be found here along with the summary of their reviews, as well as summaries of all reviews.
The stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM), is expected to run out of cash this year. It is hoping that a $5.5 billion, refinancing proposal will qualify for the ballot this fall and be approved by voters. Currently, election officials are trying to determine whether the measure as the necessary number of signatures of registered voters to qualify.
Any scientist knows that stem cells are NOT going to help COVID19. Shame on the scientists who are willing to promise anything to get funding. And shame on CIRM for encouraging this folly. This is unfortunately a convincing example of how CIRM is willing to waste taxpayers' money, and they've lost my vote...should they get this on the ballot. It's contrary to CIRM's mission, and a foolish grab for publicity.
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