Innovation dies in the budget-cutting process

Give someone enough rope, my mother would say, and he’ll hang himself.
Now wrap that metaphor around California and a small investment/big return proposition around leukemia.
With an investment of only $290,633, the University of California Office of the President — or UCOP, as it’s known — will support research seeking a way to expand the population of stem cells in cord blood transplants for leukemia patients. Coupled with cash from GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ cell technologies unit, the UCOP Discovery Grant will take research teams led by UCSF’s Andrew Leavitt and Michelle Arkin to the starting line of essentially curing the deadly blood cancer.
These types of projects, however, are finding cash tougher to come by.