June 2010 Digest

June 30, 2010

CIRM June 2010 Digest

CIRM grantee Joanna Wysocka was awarded the Outstanding Young Investigator Award at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (co-hosted by CIRM), held in San Francisco this month. Wysocka, who is assistant professor of developmental biology at Stanford University School of Medicine, won for her work understanding how cells determine their eventual fate in a developing embryo. Congratulations!

 

New Funding

On June 22nd, the CIRM Governing Board approved $25 million to fund 19 projects intended to overcome immune rejection of transplanted stem cells. Two of the awards include a collaboration with partners at Monash University whose portion of the award will be funded by the Australian state of Victoria.

New Videos

CIRM released a new video about a stem cell approach to treating HIV/AIDS. The video features John Zaia, the leader of the City of Hope disease team, and Jeff Sheehy, an HIV/AIDS patient advocate and member of the CIRM governing board.

A video of CIRM's Spotlight on HIV/AIDS Disease Team Awards presented in April is also now posted.

On June 15th, CIRM in partnership with the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) presented the public forum, "A Dose of Reality on Alternative Stem Cell Treatments: What you don’t know can hurt you."


New Collaborations

In mid-June, CIRM signed two new collaborative agreements with the state of Wisconsin and the New York Stem Cell Foundation. These agreements aim to create a framework for joint funding between researchers and to accelerate the pace of development of cellular therapies to reach patients.