California's 'Great Ideas,' Stem Cell Awards Target Universal Blood Supply, Alzheimer's and Much More

The California stem cell agency this week awarded a total of $1.4 million to six scientists to jump start their work in what it calls its "great ideas" program.

The awards went for research ranging from creation of a universal blood supply with human stem cells to mitigating Alzheimer's disease, which has seen an increase of 55 percent in its death rate from 1999 to 2014, according to results of a new study released yesterday

The agency said in a press release that the "Inception" program  "provides seed funding for great ideas that have the potential to impact human stem cell research, but need some initial support. It’s hoped this will enable the researchers to test their ideas, and give them the data they need to compete for more substantial funding."

Jonathan Thomas, chairman of the agency's governing board, said,

"This is a high risk, high reward program. We feel that a small investment now could produce enormous benefits later.”

The funding is small indeed. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM), as the agency is formally known, finances some clinical trials at $20 million a crack. The largest award in the "great ideas" program was $265,500.

The blood supply award was a reminder of another program that the agency used to entice star researchers to California. The blood grant went to Tannishtha Reya of UC San Diego. She came to California with her spouse, Robert Wechsler-Reya. He was lured by CIRM in 2010 with $5 million in funding to work at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla.. He has not received any further funding from the agency. This is the first CIRM award for Reya.

Another round of the Inception program is scheduled to open up in January 2018. Here is a link to the most recent request for applications. 

Here is a list of the winners with their application numbers. The summaries of reviewer comments on each application and their scores can be found here.  All of the institutions have ties to CIRM board members, who are not permitted to vote on applications involving their institutions. However, they can vote on creation of the research grant programs, establishment of their scope and rules.

DISC1-10074

Reprogramming human stem cells for blood cell generation

T. Reya – U.C. San Diego

$232,200

DISC1-10036

Prodrug innovation to target muscle stem cells and enhance muscle regeneration

H. Blau – Stanford University

$235,834

DISC1-10079

An exosome-based translational strategy to mitigate Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology

J. Baulch – U.C. Irvine

$179,911

DISC1-09912

A novel tissue engineering technique to repair degenerated retina

B. Thomas – University of Southern California

$215,133

DISC1-09999

Generation of expandable, self-renewing muscle stem cells for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

A. Sacco – Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute Letter to board

$265,500

DISC1-09984

Hypo-immunogenic cardiac patches for myocardial regeneration

S. Schrepfer – U.C. San Francisco Letter to board

$238,500

$4 Million in Big Ideas Approved by California Stem Cell Agency

The $3 billion California stem cell agency this week welcomed the first members of its "Great Ideas" club and gave them a total of  nearly $4 million to pursue the scientific gleams in their eyes.

Nineteen researchers received awards at a meeting yesterday of the governing board of the agency. They were the first such grants approved by the nearly 12-year-old enterprise.

Writing on the agency's Stem Cellar blog, Kevin McCormack, senior director of communications, said,

"The goal...is to provide seed funding for great, early-stage ideas that may impact the field of human stem cell research but need a little support to test if they work. If they do work out, the money will also enable the researchers to gather the data they’ll need to apply for larger funding opportunities, from CIRM and other institutions, in the future."

Basically, all the applicants had to do was demonstrate was a "strong scientific rationale." The awards were small, only a maximum of $150,000 each, with overhead costs at recipients' institutions adding as much as $87,000 more, depending on the institution. Agency employees have used terms like "big ideas" and "great ideas" to describe the grant round.

All but one of the recipients came from institutions with ties to members of the agency's governing board. About 90 percent of the $1.9 billion the agency has awarded has gone to institutions with links to board members, who, however, are not permitted to vote on grants to their institutions.

Randy Mills, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), as the Oakland-based agency is formally known, said in a news release,

“This is a program supporting early stage ideas that have the potential to be ground breaking. We asked scientists to pitch us their best new ideas, things they want to test but that are hard to get funding for. We know not all of these will pan out, but those that do succeed have the potential to advance our understanding of stem cells and hopefully lead to treatments in the future.”

Here are three examples of the type of work involved. Alysson Muotri at UC San Diego plans to examine treatments for inflammation of the brain, which is an important component of such afflictions as Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, lupus and multiple sclerosis. Stanley Carmichael at UCLA wants to see if reprogrammed adult stem cells can help repair damage caused by strokes. Holger Willenbring at UC San Francisco is looking at creation of mini livers with stem cells to help patients waiting for liver transplants.