Genentech Hall, UCSF, and the UCLA Medical Center

Any city in California can now bid to become the home base of the $3 billion stem cell research project authorized by Proposition 71 due to changes made yesterday by the subcommittee responsible for searching for the location for that organization, as long as it can meet the other requirements specified in the Request for Proposals now on track to be issued by the ICOC on February 7, 2005.

Meeting for the first time at 11:00 am PST on Tuesday, January 25, 2005, in Room 114 in Genentech Hall at the University of California in San Francisco, with audioconferencing connections to other sites at UCLA, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the University of California at Davis, the Site Search Subcommittee of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC), established by California voters in November, 2004, when they passed Proposition 71 by a 3-2 ratio, to control the operations of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which will administer the dispersal of the $3 billion in bond-sale generated funds also authorized under Proposition 71, decided to expand the locations now eligible to win the coveted title of "Home of the CIRM" from, as was stated in the first draft of its proposed RFP, "close to a major center of biomedical research in the Los Angeles Basin, the San Francisco Bay Area, or the San Diego Metropolitan Area," to according to ICOC and Site Search Subcommittee member Sherry Lansing, "any place in the State of California" that can meet the other specified requirements for becoming the site of the CIRM's headquarters.

The location of the CIRM's main offices will, according to Ms. Lansing, the outgoing Chairman of Paramount Pictures, no longer "be limited to those three cities."

The Site Search Subcommittee of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) decision to allow the location of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) headquarters anywhere in California (that meets the other requirements) came during a meeting which also included a presentation by this reporter calling upon the Site Search Subcommittee to put the CIRM headquarters everywhere and nowhere in California by putting it in cyberspace.

You can hear a live recording of that presentation by clicking here.

The comments about this presentation made immediately afterwards and audible in the recording are those of Robert Klein II, Chair of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee, Interim President of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Chair of the ICOC Site Search Subcommittee, who can be heard to support the idea, proposed in this reporter's presentation, of creating a "California BioGrid" to facilitate genomic and stem cell research, in Mr. Klein's words, "regardless of what the location is of this Institute."

Mr. Klein was, at the time, presiding over the meeting of the ICOC Site Search Subcommittee from Room 114 in Genentech Hall at the University of California, San Francisco, while this reporter's comments were being made in Room 17-187 of the UCLA Center for Health Sciences Hospital (CHS). Other ICOC members and members of the public participated in this meeting from remote, audioconferencing-equipped sites at the University of California, Davis and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

To access three, more-detailed, explanations of why putting the CIRM in cyberspace is good for California, good for bio-medical research, and especially good for the CIRM employees who would most directly benefit if the ICOC decides to go with the Cyberspace CIRM option, click on these links: Cyberspace CIRM #1, Cyberspace CIRM #2, and Cyberspace CIRM #3.

To hear a slightly-longer version of this reporter's presentation to the ICOC Site Search Subcommittee (with better sound quality) regarding the establishment of a Cyber CIRM, in a pre-recorded, "preview" version, and to read a text version of his remarks, click here.