California Stem Cell Conflicts of Interest and Their Regulation Rise Next Week

Proposition 14 left the state stem cell agency with $5.5 billion plus a significant and wide range of new issues. One involves creation of “advisory task forces,” which were not formally enabled in the ballot initiative that created CIRM 16 years ago.  

Next Thursday the agency's governing board takes on conflict-of-interest rules for those new entities as its directors push into the new territory of Proposition 14. Conflicts, however, have been a bugaboo for the agency for years. 

Advisory/working groups to CIRM have played a significant role in the past and may play an even greater role under the agency’s new charter. They are likely to be the venue where major new issues are hashed over and policies developed that are adopted by the full board with little change.

Those policies are likely to have an impact on businesses developing stem cell therapies and their affordability and accessibility not to mention researchers.

Read all about it in an item posted today on a new platform for this blog, the California Stem Cell Report (CSCR), the only independent, news and information source devoted solely to the  Golden State's 16-year-old research program, the first of its kind in state history. 

This blog's migration to a new platform is aimed at improving service to readers and helping to bring a new focus to our coverage, which began in January 2005 and which has resulted in 5,000 items since then.