Calif. stem cell grants, conflicts

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced 22 New Faculty Awards yesterday (Dec 12) while releasing the names of five institutions from which applications were rejected for apparent conflicts of interest. The grants, awarded to young researchers at institutions throughout the state, total more than $54 million, bringing the amount of research dollars awarded by California's stem cell agency to $260 million since its 2004 inception. The institute confirmed it had rejected applications from the University of California, San Francisco, UC San Diego, UCLA, and the University of Southern California. News linkurl:reports,;http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/07/BAOTTQ0JO.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea including linkurl:ours,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53978/ identified these schools previously, but the CIRM board verified the names of the institutions at a meeting to announce the award winners, yesterday at UCLA. linkurl:Richard Murphy,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53480/ CIRM's interim president, said at the meeting that, "These were innocent, inadvertent mistakes," according to a linkurl:report;http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/13/business/news/13_05_3512_12_07.txt in the __North County Times__, a California newspaper. The CIRM board...