{"id":1063496,"date":"2013-06-02T02:55:16","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T06:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longevitymedicine.tv\/bluebird-bio-of-massachusetts-still-waiting-for-california-stem-cell-money\/"},"modified":"2024-08-17T20:29:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T00:29:57","slug":"bluebird-bio-of-massachusetts-still-waiting-for-california-stem-cell-money-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/stem-cell-therapy\/bluebird-bio-of-massachusetts-still-waiting-for-california-stem-cell-money-2.php","title":{"rendered":"Bluebird bio of Massachusetts Still Waiting for California Stem Cell Money"},"content":{"rendered":"
Seven months after the California stem
cell agency awarded $9.4 million<\/a> to bluebird bio<\/b> of Cambridge, Mass.,
the company has yet to receive any of the cash from the Golden State.<\/div>
<\/div>
Kevin McCormack<\/b>, a spokesman for the $3
billion agency, this week said negotiations are still underway with
the bluebird, which is planning to go public,  but did not elaborate. Post-award negotiations are
common at the agency, but generally take much less time.<\/div>
<\/div>
The cash from CIRM<\/b> is scheduled to
assist in clinical trials for a stem cell-gene therapy to correct a genetic disease in young patients with B-thalassemia, a
rare blood disorder that can cause widespread organ damage
and premature death.<\/div>
<\/div>
Earlier this month, bluebird bio, which
prefers the lower case lettering for its name, announced that it
intends to take the company public in an $86 million offering.<\/a> In
March, it announced a collaboration with Celgene<\/b> that provided for an upfront payment of $75 million<\/a> and promised up to $225 million per
product in potential option fees and clinical and regulatory
milestones. The CIRM grant is conditioned on a matching commitment
from bluebird.<\/div>
<\/div>
Cash from the stem cell agency can only
be spent on operations within California. According to the CIRM summary of the review of the bluebird application<\/a>, which was scored
at 73, the company said,<\/div>

“We will have at least two clinical
sites in California, and more likely up to 4 sites, 2) our viral
vector manufacturing will occur in California, 3) our cell processing
will occur in California, 4) we will hire several consultants and
full-time employees within California to support the program.
Overall, several million dollars will be spent employing the services
of people, academic institutions, and other companies within the
state of California.”<\/p><\/blockquote>

The company has said that it is working
with Donald Kohn<\/b> at UCLA<\/b> and Elliot Vichinsky<\/b> at Oakland's Children's
Hospital.<\/b><\/div>
<\/div>
The bluebird web site lists a
California location for bluebird at 1001 Bayhill Dr, Suite 200, in
San Bruno, which is south of San Francisco. An Internet search
indicates that is a generic address for a number of business
including a realty firm, a roof repair business and a family law
attorney. The California Stem Cell Report<\/b> has asked bluebird to
clarify the nature of the address.<\/div>
<\/div>
In an interview last October<\/a> with Ron Leuty<\/b> of the
San Francisco Business Times, David Davidson,<\/b> the lead scientist on
the project, said,<\/div>

“We began the process (with CIRM)
early in (2012) but discussions have been going on for over a year
about potentially pursuing this.<\/p><\/blockquote>

“The interaction with CIRM has been
extraordinarily collaborative. We had contact with the coordinators
at CIRM that helped us manage the process. It took a lot of effort on
our part to put together a dossier providing support for our program.
It was really like a mini-regulatory filing — on the science, the
preclinical toxicology work that we’ve done, a detailed plan for
the trial, a detailed plan for the budgets, a detailed plan on how we
intended to spend the CIRM money in California. That was an important
part of it. They wanted a clear plan on how this investment would be
spent.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>

Source:
http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/blogspot\/uqpFc\/~3\/zR-Ht90u_7o\/bluebird-bio-of-massachusetts-still.html<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven months after the California stemcell agency awarded $9.4 million to bluebird bio of Cambridge, Mass.,the company has yet to receive any of the cash from the Golden State.Kevin McCormack, a spokesman for the $3billion agency, this week said negotiations … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1246878],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1063496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stem-cell-therapy","category-stem-cells"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}