Excerpts from the IOM Report on the California Stem Cell agency

“Improvements to CIRM’s governance
structure, scientific program, and policies are critical to bet­ter
serving California taxpayers who elected to devote funding to promote
stem cell research in the state. The necessary changes outlined by
the IOM committee, if enacted by the state and/or the institute,
would help to instill confidence among the scientific community and
California residents in the vital work that CIRM is accomplishing.”

“It is the committee’s judgment
that overall, CIRM has done a very good job of initially establishing
and then updating the strategic plans that have set priorities for
and guided its programs, and of taking advantage of its guaranteed
flow of $300 million a year for 10 years to establish a sustainable
position in regenerative medicine for California. The challenge of
moving its research programs closer to the clinic and California’s
large biotechnology sector is certainly on CIRM’s agenda, but
substantial achievements in this arena remain to be made.

“Despite its demonstrable
achievements to date, as well as the largely positive independent
reports covering various aspects of its operations, no one would
claim that CIRM is a perfect organization or that it should adhere
slavishly to its initial form of organization, set of regulations, or
pattern of priorities. The field of regenerative medicine has
advanced rapidly since November 2004, and CIRM itself has seen the
need to alter its activities and approaches in some areas. The
committee believes the same should be true of its governance
structure, some of its administrative practices, and its use of
external perspectives on strategic scientific priorities and on the
evaluation of other key policies, such as intellectual property, to
ensure that they continue to encourage the development and deployment
of new treatments.”

“While the restrictions on amending
the administrative structure of CIRM established in Proposition 71
had the advantage of protecting the institute’s ongoing operations
from outside interference in an ethically controversial arena, they
also made it difficult to modify the organization’s structure in
response to experience and/or changing circumstances. Moreover, these
protections, whatever their benefits, appear to some to shield CIRM
from the normal accountability mechanisms in place for state
agencies.”

“Far too many board mem­bers
represent organizations that receive CIRM funding or benefit from
that funding. These com­peting personal and professional
interests com­promise the perceived independence of the ICOC,
introduce potential bias into the board’s decision making, and
threaten to undermine confidence in the board. Neither the board
chair nor board members should serve on any working group. The board
itself should include representatives of the diverse constituencies
that have an interest in stem cell research, but no institution or
organiza­tion should be guaranteed a seat.”

“The problematic perception of
conflicts of interest has persisted for as long as CIRM has existed.
The IOM committee would be less concerned about individual board
members with actual or perceived conflicts of interest if the board
membership included more truly independent members. The majority of
board members should be independent, with no competing or conflicting
personal or professional interest. Broader representation from a
wider variety of stakeholders will inject new perspectives into the
panel and will help to dispel the perception of conflicts of
interest.

“CIRM also should revise its conflict
of interest definitions to include non-financial interests, such as
the potential for personal conflicts of interest to arise from one’s
own affliction with a disease or personal advocacy on behalf of that
disease. CIRM policies for managing conflicts of interest should
apply to that broader definition.”

“Currently, the ICOC (the agency's
governing board) functions both as an executor and as an
overseer—competing duties that compromise the ICOC’s critical
role of pro­viding independent oversight and strategic
direc­tion. The IOM committee recommends that CIRM’s operations
be separated from its over­sight. The board should delegate more
author­ity and responsibility for day-to-day affairs to the
president and senior management, and the ICOC’s three working
groups should report to senior management within CIRM, rather than to
the ICOC. The moves would permit the board to better focus its energy
and collective talent on strategic planning, overseeing financial
perfor­mance, ensuring legal compliance, assessing the
president’s performance, and devising a plan for preserving and
expanding its considerable assets to permit the institute to continue
its important work after the bond measures end.”

“While the latest round of awards
challenge teams to have filed a request to begin clinical trials or
to have completed early-stage trials in patients within four years,
the committee feels these ambi­tious goals are unrealistic. New
therapies take more time to progress to federal approval, and
early-stage clinical trials are beset by a stagger­ingly high
failure rate. Rather than judging suc­cess by simply tallying the
number of active clini­cal trials, the IOM committee suggests
that CIRM also continue its focus on underlying biological mechanisms
that drive the success or failure of a promising therapy and on
careful design of clini­cal trials. Advances in these areas will
help the entire field progress, even if a specific drug candi­date
is not approved." 

“In the short term, CIRM’s
expenditures are supporting approximately 3,400 jobs and their
innovative efforts have also attracted substantial additional private
and institutional resources to this research arena in California
CIRM’s long-term impact on such critical aspects of the California
economy as state tax revenues and health care costs beyond the
shorter-term and temporary impact of its direct expenditures cannot
be reliably estimated at this point in CIRM’s history.... (T)he
estimate of the Analysis Group (2008) that the CIRM program alone
would support about 3,400 jobs as long as it was allocating about
$300 million per year in research and development grants appears
quite reasonable to the committee. To put this estimate in context,
however, total employment in California is roughly 16 million, and
NIH alone provides more than $3.5 billion per year to California
research institutions.”

“CIRM should propose regulations that
specify who will have the power and authority to assert and enforce
in the future rights retained by the state in CIRM-funded
intellectual property. CIRM should seek to clarify which state
agencies and actors will be responsible for the exercise of
discretion currently allocated to CIRM and the ICOC (the CIRM
governing board) over future determinations on issues regarding
march-in rights, access plans, and revenue-sharing rights that might
arise years after CIRM's initial funding period has passed.... (T)he
ICOC should reconsider whether its goal of developing cures would be
better served by harmonizing CIRM’s IP policies wherever possible
with the more familiar policies of the Bayh-Dole Act(federal IP law).