Twenty years ago, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 71, which allocated $3 billion to support stem cell research and created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). In 2020, Proposition 14 passed, providing an additional $5.5 billion.
CIRM will reflect on the past two decades, highlighting early research that has evolved into potential therapies, the growing workforce of scientists and laboratory technicians trained in stem cell science, the expansion of the biotechnology industry focused on regenerative medicine, and more.
This article is part of a series exploring key milestones and metrics from CIRM’s first 20 years.
New businesses and clinical trials
CIRM’s 20th Anniversary Annual Report includes some metrics-at-a-glance. Critically, it highlights the 50+ new businesses that have roots in CIRM-funded research and 108 (113 as of March 2025) clinical trials that are advancing with CIRM funding.
When the agency was formed in 2004, federal funding for stem cell research was restricted to a very small number of stem cell lines that were both hard to access and not very robust. The field had a lot of theoretical promise, but not enough scientists were working with stem cells, not enough (and not the right kind of) stem cell lines existed, and not enough was known about how to grow stem cells into the kinds of cells that could treat disease.
CIRM’s earliest funding focused on overcoming those hurdles so that the field could move toward the new businesses and clinical trials that exist today. A timeline in the Anniversary Annual Report shows this transition.
Building the regenerative medicine field
The agency’s first decade saw funding to build the infrastructure and community needed for the regenerative medicine field to thrive. That includes training programs for graduate students; internships for high school, undergraduate, and master’s students; funding to support young faculty who were just building their stem cell labs; new facilities to support the growing community; and funding for early and mid-stage research that would create the knowledge needed for future therapies.
In 2014, one decade after CIRM’s founding, scientists led by Donald Kohn, MD, at UCLA carried out the first successful stem cell-based therapy funded by the agency. The gene therapy approach cured a child with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) or the “bubble boy” disease.
Since then, CIRM has continued to fund scientists and projects that will maintain a pipeline of stem cell research and added new programs to support clinical trials, assist patients in accessing those trials, help scientists move their research from ideas to therapies, and provide tools and resources to accelerate commercialization of new therapies.
Written by guest contributor Amy Adams
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- Source: https://blog.cirm.ca.gov/2025/04/03/20-years-of-cirm-from-building-the-infrastructure-to-clinical-trials/
