Inception – Discovery Stage Research Projects

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Objective

The mission of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. The objective of the Discovery Program is to support exploratory research leading to the discovery of novel stem cell technologies to improve patient care.

DISC 1: The Inception Awards

The Inception Awards Program provides seed funding to support the exploration of transformational ideas that hold the potential to greatly impact the field of human stem cell research, but that require the generation of additional data to be competitive for larger funding opportunities through CIRM or other sources. 

Please see the Partnering Opportunity for Discovery Stage Research Projects page for the Inception Program Announcement, application deadline and other details.

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To Submit an Application:

1. Go to the Grants Management Portal (https://grants.cirm.ca.gov) and log in with your existing CIRM Username and Password. If you do not have a Username, Click on the “New User” link and follow the instructions to create a CIRM Username and password.
2. After logging in, select the tab labeled “Open Programs”. Under the section labeled “RFAs and Programs Open for Applications”, click on the applicable link to Start a DISC Grant Application.
3. Complete each section of the Application by clicking on the appropriate link and following the posted instructions. Proposal templates can be located and submitted under the “Uploads” section.
4. To submit your Application, click on the “Done with Application” button. The “Done with Application” button will be enabled when all of the mandatory sections have been completed. Please note that once this has been selected, you will no longer be able to make changes to your Application.
5. To confirm submission of your Application, select the tab labeled “Your Applications” and check the table under the section labeled “Your Submitted Applications”. You will see your Application number and project title listed once the submission process has been completed.

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Awards

Institution	Investigator	Grant Title	Award Value
University of California, San Diego	Karl Karl J. Wahlin	An IPSC cell based model of macular degeneration for drug discovery.	$232,200
University of California, Los Angeles	Alireza Moshaverinia	Gingival mesenchymal stem cells as a novel treatment modality for periodontal tissue regeneration	$194,483
Zenobia Therapeutics	Vicki Nienaber	A new phenotypic screening platform that identifies biologically-relevant targets and lead compounds for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease	$112,500
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Dmitriy Sheyn	IVD rejuvenation using iPSC-derived notochordal cells	$241,992
Loma Linda University	Dr. David J Baylink	Bone Marrow Targeting of Hematopoietic Stem Cells Engineered to Overexpress 25-OH-VD3 1-α-hydroxylase for Acute Myeloid Leukemia Therapy	$178,967
Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research	Dr. Ngan F Huang	iPSC-Derived Smooth Muscle Progenitors for Treatment of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm	$172,621
University of California, Davis	Dr. Alice F Tarantal	Enhanced Branching Morphogenesis and Pluripotent Cell Lineage Differentiation for Pediatric Regenerative Therapies	$235,800
Loma Linda University	Julia J. Unternaehrer-Hamm	Targeting cancer stem cells with nanoparticle RNAi delivery to prevent recurrence and metastasis of ovarian cancer	$172,870
Human BioMolecular Research Institute	Dr. John R Cashman	Human Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells: Developing a Novel Drug for Cancer Eradication	$303,785
Stanford University	Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi	Optimizing self-renewal signaling kinetics to stabilize ex vivo hematopoietic stem cell expansion	$210,906
University of California, San Diego	Gerald P Morris	Identification of antigenic neo-epitopes from in vitro reprogrammed human tissue precursors for regenerative therapy	$193,500
University of California, Davis	Alyssa Panitch PhD	Development of treatments to improve healing of ischemic wounds	$235,099
Stanford University	Guillem Pratx	Novel metabolic labeling method for tracking stem cells to irradiated salivary glands using PET	$229,227
University of California, San Francisco	Semil P Choksi	Generation of human airway stem cells by direct transcriptional reprogramming for disease modeling and regeneration	$238,408
University of California, Irvine	Janet E Baulch	An exosome-based translational strategy to mitigate Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology	$157,650
University of California, San Diego	Dr. Tannishtha Reya	Reprogramming human stem cells for blood cell generation	$210,060
Stanford University	Dr. Helen M Blau	Prodrug innovation to target muscle stem cells and enhance muscle regeneration	$235,834
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute	Dr Alessandra Sacco	Generation of expandable, self-renewing muscle stem cells for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy	$252,000
University of California, San Francisco	Sonja Schrepfer	Hypo-immunogenic cardiac patches for myocardial regeneration	$235,818
University of Southern California	Biju B. Thomas	A Novel Tissue Engineering Technique to Repair Degenerated Retina	$215,133
Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles	Dr. Senta Georgia	Developing a personalized approach to beta cell replacement for patients with a genetic form of diabetes	$179,995
Vitalant Research Institute	Dr. Marcus Oliver Muench	Modulating Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial Cell Permeability to Enhance Engraftment of Endothelial Cell Progenitors for the Treatment of Hemophilia A	$180,000
Stanford University	Jeffrey L Goldberg	Embryonic Stem Cells for Corneal Endothelial Degeneration	$235,836
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Owen N Witte M.D.	Identification of stem cell surface markers as potential therapeutic targets for advanced prostate cancer	$209,160
University of California, San Diego	Professor Alysson R Muotri	Reverse transcriptase inhibitors as a novel therapeutic approach for neurological autoimmune disorders	$210,060
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. April Pyle Ph.D.	Novel Platforms to Enhance In Vivo Delivery of Skeletal Muscle Progenitor Cells from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells	$230,400
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Bennett G Novitch Ph.D.	Organoid Modeling of Human Cortical Microcircuits	$208,916
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Professor Clive Niels Svendsen	Blood Brain Barrier (BBB)-on-Chip: Development and validation of a novel iPS-based microfluidic model of the human BBB	$241,992
University of California, San Francisco	Dr. Holger F Willenbring	Generation of bile duct-competent transplantable human liver organoids	$206,460
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Arjun Deb	Targeting progenitors in scar tissue to reduce chronic scar burden	$230,400
University of California, Berkeley	Dr. Jacob Ellery Corn Ph.D	Genome editing for causation and reversion of MPN-associated mutations in human hematopoietic stem cells	$235,800
Stanford University	Dr. Philip Arden Beachy PhD	Curing bladder cancer by replacing corrupted urothelium with differentiated hES cells	$210,906
University of California, San Diego	Dionicio Siegel	New Methods for the Chemical Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells	$232,200
Stanford University	Dr. Bertha Chen	Autologous iPSC-based therapy for radiation induced bladder injury	$235,836
University of California, Los Angeles	Dr. Thomas Carmichael M.D., Ph.D.	iPS-Interneuron Transplantation for Neural Repair after Stroke	$229,396
University of California, San Diego	Karl Karl J. Wahlin	Microenvironment based optimization of retinal induction using CRISPR-CAS9 reporter pluripotent stem cells as an expandable source of retinal progenitors and photoreceptors.	$232,200
University of California, San Francisco	Andrew Stephen Brack	Examining the efficacy of GDF11 antibody as a rejuvenator of aged human muscle stem cell capacity and muscle repair .	$180,000
Stanford University	Dr. Phillip C Yang	Activation of patient-specific endogenous myocardial repair through the exosomes generated from the hypoxic iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (iCMs).	$234,619
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Linda Cambier	Exosomal Y-RNAs as mediators of bioactivity of cardiac-derived cell therapy	$181,063
			Total: $8,364,091.97