Meeting of California's stem cell minds

Last week CIRM held our almost-yearly grantee meeting, which brought together our grantees from across California plus some international collaborators and world-renowned stem cell leaders who gave some riveting talks.

CIRM grantee Paul Knoepfler from UC Davis was blogging from the meeting. He had this to say:

Earlier I threw out there the idea that many different interested parties should come together to advance science. Something I called “big tent science” and “big tent team science”.

I think CIRM is an outstanding example of this idea in action and I could see that in evidence today at the CIRM Grantee Meeting here in San Francisco. It’s very inspirational.

He went on to share this from a talk by Craig Ventor:

The meeting was kicked off with a talk by Craig Venter, the amazing scientist who has pushed research forward in so many ways including sequencing the human genome and making the first synthetic life form.

Dr. Venter, who has been involved in some of the most cutting-edge, exciting science in the last century as well as founding or being involved in many scientific organizations, said this about CIRM:

"This is the greatest scientific organization founded in our era."

Being there what stood out was the wide range of diseases being studied by our grantees, all with the eventual hope of finding therapies. It's a real thrill to see signs of hope for the wonderful patient advocates I've gotten to know through CIRM, and for my friends and family, all of whom stand to benefit from this work.

We'll be posting more about the meeting, including videos of two talks (including Ventor's) and of a pre-meeting target product profile workshop,  and a video montage of our grantees talking about their work.

A.A.