On Aug. 24, 2023, researchers at City of Hope announced were awarded $32.3 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to support three novel Phase 1 clinical trials evaluating innovative cell and gene therapy treatments for patients with HIV, acute myeloid leukemia and severe aplastic anemia. Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope was awarded two-thirds of the $50 million in this latest round of CIRM awards, the highest of any entity in the state.  

City of Hope is a leader in gene therapies, including bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants. As one of the highest volume transplant centers in the nation and the largest in California, City of Hope has performed over 20,000 transplants since it became one of the first cancer centers in the U.S. to offer the therapy in 1976.

City of Hope and other institutions also developed a pre-transplant treatment for older adults and other patients that resulted in the fifth patient in the world  — and the oldest — to achieve long-term remission for leukemia and HIV. (The patient had also received stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that makes people resistant to most HIV strains.)