Stem cell grant makers shouldn't profit from research
BY MICHELLE L. BRANDT
Faced with questions about potential conflicts of interest, the board that oversees California's new stem cell institute approved Thursday a set of rules designed to keep its members from personally profiting from their decisions. The decision is an important step toward beginning to grant money to researchers, though a host of other issues still remain to be resolved before the coffers can be opened.
"If we're going to get this program up and running we're going to have to be squeaky clean," said Gerald Levey, MD, dean of UCLA's school of medicine, before he and other members of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, or ICOC, unanimously approved the policy at the daylong meeting in Los Angeles.
The ICOC is charged with governing the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which was created by the passage of Proposition 71 and will allocate as much as $3 billion over the next 10 years for stem cell research. A number of board members are leaders of major research institutions and have ties to biotechnology companies, causing editorial boards and watchdog groups as well as ICOC members to express concerns about possible conflicts of interest.
Indeed, the day before the ICOC meeting, the Oakland-based Center for Genetics and Society, which opposed Prop. 71, issued a release complaining that seven ICOC members have industry ties that could create conflicts.
"We're struggling with a perception about how we operate," Zach Hall, PhD, interim president of the institute said at the meeting. Before the ICOC distributes grants, he said, it must ensure that the public knows ICOC members are "not here to fund grants that we have a stake in."
Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the medical school and an ICOC member, has spoken widely in favor of scientists taking strong actions to avoid any appearance of conflicts of interest. He personally has no financial stakes in any company doing medical research, and he applauded the commission's decision to support the new standards, calling it a "balanced and reasonable policy."
The policy, which serves as a placeholder until the ICOC holds public hearings and adopts permanent rules, bans members from receiving state funds for research or voting on grants that could financially benefit them, their close family members or their employers. It also prohibits members from taking gifts from any person or business that might lobby the institute.
The rules don't ban board members from holding stock or serving on the boards of biotech companies, though several people, including a representative from the Center for Genetics and Society, expressed support for such a policy during public comment.
The ICOC's discussion of the new rules was one of its lengthiest and most passionate since the group began meeting monthly earlier this year. Despite a packed agenda for the all-day meeting, few members seemed eager to end discussion of conflict issues. Board members kept raising their hands to speak nearly two hours after the discussion began.
Not all members were initially in favor. David Baltimore, PhD, president of California Institute of Technology, worried that some of the language could limit collaborations among scientists. He said he would consider resigning from the ICOC if the policy prevented him from participating in important projects.
The policy's language needed a number of tweaks before winning approval. It, for instance, originally barred ICOC members from serving as principal investigators on institute-funded research. The final draft banned members from receiving "salary support" through such grants, as well.
Also during the meeting, the board approved a conflict policy for institute staff, and Hall outlined the institute's timeline for distributing training grants. The plan is to award the first batch of grants, which are earmarked for the training of students and clinical fellows, in September.
