BURLINGAME, Ca. – Directors of the California stem cell agency
today sidetracked minor changes in its conflict of interest
rules for the scientists who review applications for millions of
dollar in state funds.
The scientists score the applications, and their decisions have
determined the fate of 98 percent of thousands of applications over
the last nine years. The agency has given out $1.9 billion.
The proposed conflict changes were referred to the directors' Governance Subcommittee for possible alteration. The action came after two directors, Jeff Sheehy and Steve Juelsgaard, found fault with them for different reasons.
Sheehy objected to the proposal after the staff said the changes would allow two situations at the agency which have been determined to be conflicts of interest. Juelsgaard was concerned about ambiguous definitions of personal and professional conflicts as well as protection of privacy.
Today's proposal was largely triggered by a conflict of interest earlier this year involving two internationally renown scientists:
Lee Hood, president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle,
Wash., and Irv Weissman of Stanford, who are close friends and own a
ranch together in Montana.
Hood was recruited by CIRM President Alan Trounson to serve as a
scientific reviewer in a $40 million grant round involving Weissman.
Trounson has been a guest of Weissman's at the ranch. One of the
applications in the round involved Weissman, who could have received
a payment of a few thousand dollars, and Stanford,which would would
have been the site of a $24 million genomics facility.
The agency said it did not detect the relationship between
Hood and Weissman until it was called to their attention by another
reviewer who was also participating in the closed-door review of
applications. The agency is conducting another review of the
applications later this fall.
The other conflict case involved John Sladek of the University of Colorado.
The changes proposed today would create a threshold of $5,000 a
year for conflicts involving salary or consulting fees. Less than
that would not trigger a conflict situation. Other proposed changes
to be taken up by the agency board involve personal and professional
conflicts along with the nature of the economic disclosures that
reviewers, all of whom are from out-of-state, must disclose privately
to a handful of agency officials.
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