Jerry Brown: California Leads the Way on Stem Cell Research

Governor's office photo

California Gov. Jerry Brown this week praised the state's biotech industry, specifically mentioning stem cell research as example of leadership in medicine.

While he did not mention the stem cell agency by name in his state of the state speech yesterday, it was clear that he thought highly of its efforts. Here is what he said, which BayBio, an industry group, highlighted on its Web site.

“California is the nation’s leader in developing medical and scientific advances that will cure diseases and lower costs. We have six of America’s twelve top-performing metropolitan areas in biotechnology: San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and Orange County. Last year, we created a tax credit to help innovators, in these regions and beyond, hire and expand in California. Four out of the world’s twenty leading academic bioscience institutions are located here in California: UCSF and Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and UC San Diego. Just as California has led the way with stem cell research, so too can we pioneer the new field of precision medicine which uses genomics, medical devices, computer sciences and other fields to treat individual patients, instead of broad populations.”