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| Jenifer Raub, Bill Maddox and Cassandra Peters (left to right), members of the Summit4StemCells group. San Diego UT photo |
The San Diego Union Tribune this week spotlighted a
Parkinson’s patient group that is pushing the $3 billion California agency to
speed up financing on research that the group says is promising.
Reporter Bradley Fikes provided the update on the activities
of the group, Summit4StemCells, and its dismay about the slow funding by the
stem cell agency.
Earlier this month, the group was perturbed by the
cancellation of the scheduled, face-to-face meeting in San Diego tomorrow. It was changed to
a teleconference meeting that is set for only 90 minutes. However, the group is
expected to make its views known by teleconference from the Sanford Consortium in
La Jolla, where agency President Randy Mills will be based.
The face-to-face session was cancelled, the agency said, because it was
expected to be brief and because of the expense involved in bringing together
the 29 members of the governing board and some agency staff. Mills told Fikes that many of the board
members would not have been able to attend in San Diego, but the meeting would
have cost about $30,000 to stage.
How many times has CIRM changed a meeting from in person to telephonic only? Seems hard to believe that since the last ICOC meeting there isn't more to talk about than would fit in 90 minutes. CIRM seems to be moving at a slow pace especially when there have been a lack of funding opportunities for grants other than the clinical projects.
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