The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine has awarded a total of $37.3 million in grants to two research teams including University of California, Irvine scientists.
One team includes Henry Klassen, an associate professor of ophthalmology in UCI’s Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. He and colleagues from University of California, Santa Barbara and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center received $17.3 million to cultivate stem cells to treat retinitis pigmentosa.
Newark-based StemCells Inc. received a $20 million grant and will work with UCI neurobiologists Frank LaFerla and Mathew Blurton-Jones on research using the company’s purified human neural stem cells to improve memory in Alzheimer’s disease patients.