CGS-authored
State officials running the California Proposition 71 stem cell program issued a 10-year scientific spending plan Wednesday that suggests even $3 billion isn't enough to meet all the early expectations of stem cell research.
The blueprint sets a strikingly modest tone for an effort ranked among the country's boldest research enterprises when state voters approved Prop. 71 in a hype-fueled 2004 election.
Now, leaders of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created to implement the initiative, are warning voters not to expect that any new treatment will be finished with clinical trials with the $350 million-a-year, roughly decade-long effort envisioned by Prop. 71.
The goal instead will be to get "proof of principle" in the form of mid-stage clinical trial results demonstrating that a stem cell therapy can restore function in the case of a single disease. That would only be enough to entice a drug company to finance expensive, multiyear pivotal trials needed to bring a therapy into clinical use.
As many as four other disease treatments may be in the early stages of clinical trials by the end...
The blueprint sets a strikingly modest tone for an effort ranked among the country's boldest research enterprises when state voters approved Prop. 71 in a hype-fueled 2004 election.
Now, leaders of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created to implement the initiative, are warning voters not to expect that any new treatment will be finished with clinical trials with the $350 million-a-year, roughly decade-long effort envisioned by Prop. 71.
The goal instead will be to get "proof of principle" in the form of mid-stage clinical trial results demonstrating that a stem cell therapy can restore function in the case of a single disease. That would only be enough to entice a drug company to finance expensive, multiyear pivotal trials needed to bring a therapy into clinical use.
As many as four other disease treatments may be in the early stages of clinical trials by the end...