UC Irvine News Brief: CIRM awards $25 million for first-ever human clinical trial of stem cell-derived therapy
The treatment for people with spinal cord injury was created in the lab of UCI neurobiologist Hans Keirstead.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem cell agency, has awarded $25 million in support of the first FDA-approved human clinical trial based on cells derived from human embryonic stem cells. The treatment was created in the lab of Hans Keirstead, a neurobiologist with UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. The grant to Menlo Park-based Geron Corp. will support its ongoing early-phase trial on people with spinal cord injury. One individual has already received injections of the cells at a site in Georgia. This is the first time CIRM, which was created by the passage of Proposition 71 in 2004, has funded a human clinical trial of a stem cell-derived therapy.
