Post Election Media on What's Next for $12 Billion California Stem Cell Program

Passage of Proposition 14 has generated a handful of articles recently dealing with the direction of the California stem cell agency over the next decade or so, including pieces carried by Bond Buyer and Calmatters, a respected online news service dealing with state government and politics.

Barbara Feder Ostrov wrote a Nov. 24 article for Calmatters, which quoted  Jonathan Thomas, chair of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), as saying,

“California has always had a frontier mentality and a love for the cutting edge, and the work that CIRM has done has put it on the very forefront of regenerative medicine.”

Proposition 14 saved CIRM from financial extinction by requiring the state to borrow an additional $5.5 billion for the 16-year-old program, which was originally funded with $3 billion in state bonds in 2004. Total cost of the program is expected to hit about $12 billion before the money runs out again in 10 to 15 years.

Ostrov also quoted Paul Knoepfler, a UC Davis stem cell researcher and blogger, on new areas of research for CIRM that are authorized by Proposition 14. He said,

“Stem cells are interesting and important, but there are going to be a lot of new therapies in the next 10 years that are not stem-cell centric."

In the article, CIRM board member Ysabel Duron addressed the need for improvement of diversity in terms of developing therapies for underserved segments of the population. She said,

“We need to keep researchers’ feet to the fire. They need to show us a plan and we need to reward them.”

Ostrov quoted this writer on some of the issues facing CIRM, including the question of what happens when the latest $5.5 billion is exhausted:

“The sustainability issue is important and it’s hard to address.… The money doesn’t last forever.”

Bond Buyer's Keeley Webster's article noted that the agency will be rewriting its budget now that Proposition 14 has passed. The measure alters CIRM's budgeting rules, shifting some significant costs around. 

Webster quoted state Controller Betty Yee on the agency's $5 million Covid round from last spring. Yee said,

“The $5 million didn’t buy a lot, but it did help get information out to underserved communities. And it put a model out there of how CIRM has been able to accelerate research projects.”

In a piece by Andrew Sheeler, The Sacramento Bee quoted Robert Klein, a Palo real estate developer and sponsor of Proposition 14. Klein poured millions of dollars into the ballot campaign. He said, 

“We had a big obstacle because we had to communicate to voters not only the potential to change the nature of treatments ... but we also had to inform voters of how the state could afford this....It was a citizen’s initiative in the truest sense.”