The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state stem cell agency created by Proposition 71, today (Oct. 21) approved funding for 19 awards worth $67 million in its second round of awards designed to move good ideas out of the lab and into the clinic. Recipients include 11 researchers at five University of California campuses.

The Early Translation II Awards are the second of what CIRM expects to be a 12- to 18-month award cycle for these translational research grants. The research funded by these awards is considered critical to CIRM's mission of translating basic discoveries into clinical cures. The funded projects are expected to either result in a candidate drug or cell therapy or make significant strides toward such a candidate, which can then be developed for submission to the FDA for clinical trial.

Recipients, by campus, include:

• UC Davis: Roslyn (Rivkah) Isseroff and Mark Zern
• UC Irvine: Brian Cummings, Henry Klassen and Leslie Thompson
• UCLA: Sophie Deng, Noriyuki Kasahara and Bruno Peault
• UC San Diego: Catriona Jamieson and Alysson Muotri
• UCSF: Arturo Alvarez-Buylla

CIRM's governing board also approved a Research Leadership Award of $4.8 million to aid in recruiting Peter Coffey from the University College London to UC Santa Barbara. That will fund his groundbreaking research maturing embryonic stem cells into retinal pigment epithelial cells to treat macular degeneration and other forms of vision loss such as diabetic retinopathy and retinitis pigmentosa.

Related links:
California Institute for Regnerative Medicine release