IP Policy for Business Upcoming Along With Grants Rules

The California stem cell agency is busy laying the ground work for some tough work on intellectual property policies involving grants to biotech businesses and research firms.

This is likely to be more difficult than development of the policies on IP for non-profit institutions, which were approved last month. Money, of course, is the key: How to provide sufficient profit motive to stimulate development of therapies.

Patient advocates on the Oversight Committee have already indicated that they are likely to favor policies that will speed treatments. Watchdogs of the public purse are likely to be less generous with the results of state-funded research.

We are also likely to see more comments from the biotech industry. Look for the first public hearings on this issue late this month. Development of a complete policy is likely to take some months. If you want to weigh in with comments prior to the first hearing, you can contact the agency via its web site.

While the IP policy gets underway, Zach Hall, president of CIRM, says his top priority right now is fund-raising for two, previously announced conferences, one this spring and another later this year. Hall is no stranger to fund-raising. He was the man who initially presented the proposal to the Broad Foundation that resulted in a $25 million donation last month to USC for stem cell research. Hall's presentation was made three years ago, but he was pretty pleased with the outcome when we talked to him at the stem cell trial last week. Hall made the pitch while he was working at USC.

Also coming up is a meeting of interest to folks who are interested in receiving a grant from CIRM. The matter at hand is the grants administration policy that is being formulated by the agency. The Research Working Group will consider the proposal on March 14 at UC San Francisco. Some sort of teleconferencing is planned for remote locations, but the details are not available on the agenda.

The text of the proposed grants administration policy is also not available on the agenda, but you can find a summary here and the full proposal here.