CIRM awards $151 million to push stem cell treatments toward human trials

California's stem cell research funding agency doled out $151 million in new funding to move potential therapies closer to human testing, but awarded nearly $100 million less than it had planned to give. Only one of the seven so-called "disease team" awards from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, went to industry. That was a $20 million grant for Newark-based Stem Cells Inc. for a spinal cord injury treatment.