The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was sold to a gullible public on the promise of developing embryonic stem cell and therapeutic cloning CURES! CURES! CURES! that the eeeevilll Bush was thwarting. But, when that didn’t work out—and desperate to show some progress for all the money CIRM has sucked up on Californians’ credit card—it changed its tune and began funding research into adult stem cells—you know, the very ones that we had been told really didn’t hold all that much promise? Sure, you remember.
Well, the first drug developed in part with direct CIRM grants has just received FDA approval for a clinical trial, and waddya know, they were derived from cardiac adult stem cells. What a hoot.
But the CIRM, desperate to win sucker voter approval for a second binge of borrowing and spending in a state in which our cities are now declaring bankruptcy, is touting the success with no mention of the missing ESCR CURES! From the Business Wire story:
Capricor, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused on regenerative medicine, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved initiation of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for the ALLSTAR study, which will use allogeneic cardiac-derived stem cells (CDCs) to treat patients following large myocardial infarctions (MI)...”This is terrific news,” says Ellen Feigal, M.D., Senior Vice President for Research and Development at California’s stem cell agency, CIRM. “This is the first time a Disease Team funded by CIRM has been given an Investigational New Drug (IND) approval from the FDA, a critical step in testing promising therapies in patients. It’s a reflection of the progress being made in turning promising therapies into real-world treatments.”
The CIRM can toot its horn all it wants. I don’t care if all it did was boost adult stem cell research, it should be defunded. It is an arrogant, mismanaged, out of control of the state agency that needs to go out of business.
That its first, and so far only, big success came from the very approach its mendacious backers earlier disdained, is just too rich an irony to overlook.
