On Dec. 11, 2025, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) governing board approved funding of over $160 million for 16 new research awards to develop therapies for a range of rare and common diseases; supported two new funding concepts to educate high school, undergraduate, and graduate students for careers in regenerative medicine; and supported a new strategy for how CIRM will put regenerative medicine therapies within reach of Californians.

Approved clinical projects include those testing approaches for treating Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease, which both involve injecting stem cell-derived neural cells into the brain of patients to replace damaged cells. Programs targeting the rare genetic diseases Dravet Syndrome and CMTJ4 (Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 4J) are both testing genetic therapies intended to fix the mutated genes that underlie those conditions.

The 12 preclinical projects that were approved span a wide range of diseases and therapeutic approaches. The preclinical awards include several neurological diseases as well as diseases of the heart, cartilage, lung and muscle. The therapeutic approaches range from off-the-shelf cell therapies to injected CRISPR genetic therapies. CRISPR technology, which earned its discoverers a Nobel Prize in 2020, directly edits mutated genes.

Most genetic therapy approaches deliver the therapy to cells using a modified virus. Two CRISPR approaches funded today deliver the therapy to cells in the body without using a virus, which is a first for CIRM’s active portfolio and could overcome common issues with using viruses for that purpose. Stem cell-based approaches are similarly diverse in this round of funding and include stem cells taken from the patient’s own tissues and modified in the lab, or involving off-the-shelf approaches where cells are modified in a lab, distributed to clinical trial sites, and injected into the patient.

Creating a skilled workforce that can tackle the scientific challenges of today and deliver the innovative solutions of tomorrow is an essential part of CIRM’s mission to accelerate world class science and deliver transformative regenerative medicine treatments. The governing board approved concepts for two educational programs—EDUC8, which combines the Bridges Award and COMPASS Program, and the EDUC3 SPARK Program, which provides immersive summer research internships for high school students. These concepts extend existing programs with some updates to give trainees additional opportunities.

The Bridges awards help undergraduate and master’s-level students from state universities and community college access research training opportunities in academic and biotechnology industry labs. The COMPASS Program provides academic and mentoring support to early-stage undergraduate students, with an emphasis on identifying untapped talent and fostering new perspectives within the scientific workforce.

To date, CIRM’s education and workforce programs have trained more than 4,600 students, interns, and fellows in the fields of regenerative medicine. Students from these programs come from many regions around California and bring unique knowledge and perspectives that inform and enhance their contributions to the field.