CGS-authored
For years, Geron Corp. had claimed to be in the vanguard among California companies engaged in stem cell research. So it was something of a stunner when it announced Nov. 14 that it was abandoning the stem cell field completely.
Geron's shares fell 20% the next day, but that was probably nothing compared with how far spirits must have fallen at the California stem cell agency, which just a few months earlier had made its highest-profile investment ever by awarding Menlo Park-based Geron a $25-million loan to help fund the first human trial of stem cell-based spinal cord therapy.
Since the announcement, the agency has been doing its darndest to reassure everyone that Geron's decampment isn't a huge embarrassment.
Such unexpected glitches are bound to happen when you're on the cutting edge of science, says the agency, which is known formally as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM. "There are going to be fits and starts," its chairman, Jonathan Thomas, told me last week. Even so, he maintained, "we remain unwavering in our commitment to pursuing the science."...