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The California stem cell agency on Wednesday completed creation of a $30 million effort to dramatically speed approval of stem cell therapies and establish the Golden State globally in the much-heralded regenerative medicine field.
Dubbed the “pitching machine,” the two-part program is designed to pick up where basic stem cell research leaves off and to accelerate it through the all-important clinical trials involving humans. Such trials are required prior to widespread use of a therapy by the public and generally take years.
With no debate, no questions and no discussion Wednesday, the governing board of the stem cell agency unanimously approved a $15 million award to QuintilesIMS in San Diego to help move basic research into clinical trials. The effective decision, however, was made Oct. 4 during a closed-door meeting of the agency’s scientific reviewers, who gave the proposal a score of 89 out of 100.
The other half of the pitching machine was an additional $15 million award to Quintiles, which formally began operations this month. Quintiles is a publicly traded, multinational firm based in Durham, N.C., that deals...