Stem cell research collaborative funding agreements

CIRM Collaborative Funding

CIRM has collaborative relationships with the following agencies:

  • Cancer Stem Cell Consortium, Canada (June, 2008)
  • Victoria, Australia (June, 2008)
  • Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (August, 2008)
  • Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan (November, 2008)
  • Medical Research Council, UK (September, 2008)
  • Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (December, 2008)
  • Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (September, 2009)
  • Maryland Technology Development Corporation, Maryland, U.S. (September, 2009)
  • New York Stem Cell Foundation (June, 2010)
  • Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Tongji University (October, 2010)
  • National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (November, 2010)
  • Andalusian Initiative for Advanced Therapies, Spain (October, 2010)
  • India (inSTEM) (December, 2010)
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France (January, 2011)
  • Scottish Enterprise, Scotland (August 2011)
  • National Institutes of Health (NIH), (September 2011)
  • Keystone Symposia of Molecular and Cellular Biology (February, 2012)
  • Brazil (CNPq) (March 2012)
  • Argentina (MINCYT) (March 2012)
  • Muscular Dystrophy Association (May 2012)
     

Collaborations to-date

This table shows all projects funded jointly by CIRM and its collaborative funding partners.

Partner's Jurisdiction Funding Round Grant title Funding partner commitment
Canada Disease Team Development of Highly Active Anti-Leukemia Stem Cell Therapy (HALT) $16,418,798
Canada Disease Team Therapeutic Opportunities To Target Tumor initiating Cells In Solid Tumors $19,995,715
Japan Basic Biology II Role of the microenvironment in human iPS and fetal-derived NSC fate and tumorigenesis $900,000
UK Disease Team Stem cell based treatment strategy for Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) $4,281,263
UK Disease Team Development of Therapeutic Antibodies Targeting Human Acute Myeloid Leukemia Stem Cells $4,113,475
Victoria Australia Early Translational Methods for detection and elimination of residual human embryonic stem cells in a differentiated cell product $1,062,933
Victoria Australia Early Translational Neural Stem Cells as a Developmental Candidate to Treat Alzheimer Disease $1,044,395
Victoria Australia Early Translational Ensuring the safety of cell therapy: a quality control pipeline for cell purification and validation $934,069
Victoria Australia Early Translational 'Developmental Candidates' for Cell-Based Therapies for Parkinson's Disease (PD) $827,537
Victoria Australia Transplantation Immunology Engineered immune tolerance by Stem Cell-derived thymic regeneration $506,955
Victoria Australia Transplantation Immunology Thymus based tolerance to stem cell therapies $587,499
Germany Disease Team Embryonic-Derived Neural Stem Cells for Treatment of Motor Sequelae following Sub-cortical Stroke $2,300,000
Germany Early Translational II Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells to Heal Chronic Diabetic Wounds $868,800
Germany Early Translational II Dual targeting of tyrosine kinase and BCL6 signaling for leukemia stem cell eradication $312,500
Germany Early Translational II Developing a therapeutic candidate for Canavan disease using induced pluripotent stem cell $699,699
Germany Early Translational II Crosstalk: Inflammation in Parkinson's disease (PD) in a humanized in vitro model $602,136
Germany Basic Biology III Characterization and Engineering of the Cardiac Stem Cell Niche $1,464,000
Maryland Early Translational II Neural restricted, FAC-sorted, human neural stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury $690,000
Maryland Early Translational II Banking transplant ready dopaminergic neurons using a scalable process $690,000
JDRF Disease Team Cell Therapy for Diabetes $3,000,000

Why form collaborative partnerships

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine funds research carried out in California. However, excellent stem cell science is taking place worldwide. Our collaborative funding relationships facilitate work between Californian scientists and their innovative colleagues around the globe. The program provides a mechanism for funding partnerships in which CIRM funds the California scientists while our funding partners support researchers in their jurisdictions.

Collaborative funding of research groups optimizes the use of resources, avoids duplication and creates a critical mass of excellence across a wide range of specialties worldwide. For CIRM grantees, the program expands the number of scientists with whom they can work and mitigates the geographic limitations imposed by CIRM’s funding.

How the agreements work 

CIRM’s staff constantly monitors scientific developments and challenges to identify funding areas that most effectively advance the Institute’s mission. That analysis results in Requests for Applications (“RFA”) which notify California scientists of the work the Institute wishes to fund. CIRM also consults with its collaborative funding partners, sharing ideas about priorities and funding strategies. If there is an alignment of interest between CIRM and a funding partner, that partner can commit funds to the RFA. Researchers from the partner’s state or country may then be included on collaborative applications with California researchers.

Applications that include collaborative co-investigators must satisfy the CIRM eligibility and other criteria for their specific RFA. Additionally, our funding partners may impose their own criteria for funding projects.

The application process can involve a pre-application followed by an invitation to some applicants to submit full applications, which undergo review by 15 members of CIRM’s Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group. The Grants Working Group scores the applications according to established criteria and provides recommendations to CIRM’s 29-member governing board. The governing board has the final authority to choose which applications to fund.

Proposed collaborative projects are evaluated along with all other applications. They are neither favored nor disfavored in the evaluation process. Any competitive advantage they enjoy must stem from the unique combination of excellent scientists or resources that, but for the collaborative program, could not be funded by CIRM.

If the governing board approves funding for an application that includes an international researcher, CIRM’s collaborative funding partner would be responsible for funding the international portion of the research. For those grants, CIRM monitors the research progress in cooperation with the funding partner.

How to apply for collaborative funding

Researchers in countries that have collaborative funding agreements with CIRM can only participate in RFAs in which their country has committed funds.

If a commitment has been made, researchers in California can contact colleagues in the committed funding partner’s jurisdiction; similarly researchers in the funding partner jurisdiction can contact colleagues in California to submit a collaborative application.

The process for submitting collaborative applications will differ for each round of funding. Please see the specific RFA for information on how to apply collaboratively.