Alan Trounson, until very recently president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), has accepted a position on the board of StemCells, Inc., a company that has had $19,399,504 in grants from CIRM. If the clinical trials that CIRM is partly funding pay off, he could make a bundle on stock options (details of his compensation are not available). David Jensen, of the California Stem Cell Report, brought this to light, and much more.
That looks bad, but there is much more. Jensen’s dogged reporting over the last two years established that the $19m “forgivable loan” was only approved after controversial lobbying by former CIRM chair Robert Klein that resulted in the main board overruling the recommendation of their scientific advisers.
Financially, the $19m is the least of it. Irving Weissmann, the cofounder (and still an active board member) of StemCells, Inc., has had four grants from CIRM totaling $35,420,939. Weissman was an active pitchman for Proposition 71, which set up CIRM, appearing in TV ads that mentioned his work at Stanford (he directs the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine) but not his entrepreneurial efforts.
But $55m is far from the end of the money involved. Stanford University has had more awards for more money than any other institution: 80 grants totaling $280,768,314. UCLA is second, at $215m, and no other institution has received close to that amount. One anonymous researcher emailed Jensen:
Related on the SLP
Are they really more than twice as good as UCSF ($132,650,363), and three times better than USC ($104,858,348) and UC Irvine ($98,591,836)?
Let’s be blunt: This looks like a pay-off. Technically, what Trounson and Weissman and StemCells, Inc., just did may not be illegal. But it’s shameless.
Read the full, original story: Shameful Conflicts of Interest Involving California’s Stem Cell Agency
