California's stem cell funding agency giveth and it taketh away: Just last week, the agency awarded more than $250 million to stem cell researchers -- the largest research grant round in its five-year history -- but it also terminated three grants awarded in a previous round due to slow progress earlier this year.

Human embryonic stem cells Image: Wikimedia commons, Nissim Benvenisty

The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) identified the underperforming projects by reviewing grantees' first year progress reports. These are required by all CIRM grantees in a progress monitoring system that appears to be more rigorous than that of the National Institutes of Health.

"The scientific staff are in frequent contact with our CIRM-supported PIs, assessing their progress towards the goals they were approved to pursue," CIRM director Floyd Bloom told the California Stem Cell Report (CSCR). "Lack of progress can be sufficient grounds to terminate the funding."

In February 2007, CIRM's governing board dished out 74 Scientific Excellence through Exploration and Development (SEED) grants totaling more than $46 million. The two-year SEED grants were considered high risk, high reward and designed to bring cellular and developmental biologists who had never worked with human embryonic stem cells into the field.

Though most projects were going fine, reviewers identified some programs that were not advancing, Marie Csete, former chief scientific officer of CIRM, said in a presentation at a CIRM meeting last June. The reviewers contacted the PIs, often requesting more data to more accurately assess the situation. "We were interested in hearing what people would normally not send in as a progress report: difficulty getting cell lines grown, difficulty doing certain kinds of experiments," Csete said.

Problematic projects got a second look, but if a follow-up progress report still showed little or no advancement and no plan could be created to get it back on track, CIRM could terminate the funding.

"Termination is a last option," CIRM's chief communications officer Don Gibbons wrote in an email to The Scientist. "We first work with grantees who are not progressing to get them back on track."

One of the three researchers whose grant was revoked told CSCR that he was "bitter" about the decision and emphasized the difference from NIH policy, which allows "the liberty to take the research where it leads you." Another researcher claimed that the action was premature, while the third simply said that he parted "amicably" with CIRM. All three said that they support CIRM and its goals.

"This kind of nurturing, interactive relationship with the PIs is absolutely unique in the grant world," Bloom said at the meeting in June. "It's highly commendable, and it's going to make the difference between success or failure, particularly for these intermediate level of successful early experiments where they have to be encouraged to go on and push."


Related stories:

CIRM grants delayed
[2nd February 2009]

Calif. stem cell agency back on track?
[4th October 2007]

Calif. stem cell grant raises concerns
[26th March 2007]