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Alan Trounson, the former president of the $3 billion California stem cell agency, today was named to the board of a company that has received $19.4 million from the agency, raising fresh and serious questions about conflicts of interest at the state-funded research program.
Announcement of the appointment came only seven days after Trounson left state employment. Trounson has been dogged for some time with questions about his relationship to the company, StemCells, Inc., of Newark, Ca., and its co-founder, eminent Stanford researcher Irv Weissman, who sits on the company’s six-man board and is chairman of its scientific advisory board.
StemCells, Inc., announced Trounson’s appointment in a press release this morning. The publicly traded firm said it was “thrilled” to have Trounson on its board. The first sentence of its press release noted that he had served as head of “the largest scientific funding body for stem cell research in the world.”
Weissman is director of the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford. He has received $34.7 million from the agency...