In The Stem Cellar, you often read phrases like, “as their research progresses toward the clinic.” That’s because it’s a very noteworthy milestone to advance an initial idea in the laboratory to an actual experimental therapy that has approval to be tested in people. It’s a process that can be years in making. Through our support, several research teams in California have successfully delivered innovative stem cell-based therapies to clinical trials.

Now comes the hard part.

The scene shifts from a laboratory bench to hospital beds and clinic rooms with real life patients and a bustling medical staff. Considering many stem cell therapies are first-in-human studies and have no precedent, how do you get these clinical trials up and running?

Enter CIRM’s Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network, a $24 million initiative to provide the infrastructure necessary to get stem cell clinical trials off the ground in the most efficient manner possible. For example, efforts will include (but not limited to) teaching doctors and nurses new skills for administering stem cell therapies, helping to determine how the treatments will be paid for, sharing data between trial sites to improve outcomes, and educating patients about their treatment. We believe this investment will go a long way towards fulfilling the agency’s mission to accelerate the development of stem cell therapies to patients with unmet medical needs.

In late May, the three Network programs from UCSD, City of Hope, and the UCLA/UCI consortium joined CIRM at the City of Hope campus for a kickoff workshop to mark the beginning of the endeavor. We brought our cameras along and produced this short video about the Alpha Stem Cell Clinics Network, which features interviews with each trial center’s program director: