The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state's stem cell agency, partnered with two international agencies to award more than $250 million in grants to 14 multidisciplinary groups to develop stem cell-based therapies for 11 diseases. The groups include researchers at UCSF, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara.
The Disease Team Research Awards include approximately $8 million from the Medical Research Council, United Kingdom, and approximately $35 million from the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium, Canada, to fund the international portions of the collaborations.
CIRM's 29-member governing board voted to approve funding for the four-year grants, which mark the first CIRM funding explicitly expected to result in a filing with the Food and Drug Administration to begin a clinical trial. The Disease Team Research Awards fund research teams that include basic scientists and clinicians from both academia and industry.
Read about each campus' research projects: