Editorial: More Conflicts Come to Light at Stem Cell Institute

 With a new chairman, Jonathan Thomas, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine claims it has turned a page. Thomas has vowed to be aggressive in avoiding conflicts in dispersing millions of public dollars for stem cell research.

Yet serious conflicts continue to be revealed involving CIRM. The latest one throws into question a $20 million grant awarded last year to StemCells Inc., a company that wants to transplant neural stem cells to treat Alzheimer's disease.

The institute's oversight board approved the award in September, following a lobbying effort by Robert Klein, a former chairman of the oversight board who authored Proposition 71, the initiative that created the stem cell institute. As part of that effort, Klein last year donated $21,000 to CIRM so it could send six of its in-house science officers to a conference in Japan, where Klein had special access to them.

Prior to this lobbying campaign, the institute's outside scientific reviewers recommended twice against awarding the money to StemCells Inc. Yet following Klein's efforts, the oversight board overruled them, agreeing on a 7-5 vote to approve the...