To accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has always recognized the need to educate and train a scientific workforce. Since 2006, $13.5 million from a CIRM Scholars program at USC has supported and will ultimately support a total of 110 trainees, including 50 PhD students, 43 postdoctoral fellows and 17 clinical trainees. They have had an outsized impact on the biomedical field in California and beyond.
“Sustaining regenerative medicine as a transformative field requires the training of the next generation of pioneers through rigorous academics, mentorship and immersion in discovery science,” said Chuck Murry, chair of USC’s Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. “That is exactly what the CIRM Scholars program provides for our PhD students, postdocs and clinical fellows. In turn, it is our Scholars who anchor CIRM’s broader goals of reaching high school and underserved populations, as well as training our emerging workforce in this new biotechnology.”
CIRM came into existence as a grantmaking agency in 2004, when California voters approved ballot proposition 71, which set aside $3 billion of public funding to support stem cell research and education in the state. In 2020, voters reaffirmed their commitment by approving proposition 14, which provided an additional $5.5 billion.
CIRM’s training program for PhD students, postdoctoral trainees and clinical fellows has always represented a small percentage of their total budget, but a large component of their overall vision and strategy for accelerating stem cell treatments for the benefit of California and the world.
As federal funding for research and education dwindles, CIRM funding plays an increasingly important role in continuing California’s proud tradition of leadership and innovation in regenerative medicine.
“NIH has discontinued many training programs and fellowships, leaving CIRM grants for PhD students and postdoctoral and clinical fellows to be one of the only training programs for young researchers aspiring to become leaders in stem cell biology,” said Francesca Mariani, associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at USC, and principal investigator on USC’s CIRM training grant.
This state investment has already paid major dividends, with former trainees now directing stem cell research laboratories, securing substantial federal funding for California institutions, and working at California companies bringing new types of regenerative medicine therapies to market.
At USC, CIRM’s training grants also enabled the university to launch key educational opportunities, including courses in stem cell and developmental biology, an annual retreat, and weekly seminars where PhD students and postdoctoral trainees share their research progress. These components created the educational framework that eventually became USC’s PhD Program in Development, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine.
“What CIRM did was incredibly valuable,” said Emeritus Professor Robert E. Maxson, who was in charge of USC’s first CIRM training grants. “And because the grants were big, and we were able to fund a lot of people, they really had a huge impact on helping us to jumpstart the state-wide program in stem cell biology.”
The Student Becomes the Teacher
Nearly 41 percent of USC’s CIRM trainee program alumni have dedicated their careers to academic research.
These alumni include four faculty members at major California research universities and hospitals: Douglas Feldman and Yukiko Yamaguchi at USC; Maksim Plikus at the University of California, Irvine; and Noah Merin at Cedars-Sinai.
Merin is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Director of the Leukemia Program in the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy, and Medical Director of the Hematology and Cellular Therapy Disease Research Group at Cedars-Sinai. After earning his MD and PhD degrees from the University of California, Davis, and completing his medical residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, he arrived at USC to pursue a clinical fellowship in hematology and oncology. The CIRM grant provided him with the additional opportunity to do a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship in the USC laboratory of Akil Merchant, studying patient characteristics that predict how aberrant stem cells lead to blood cancer relapse.
Merin applied for academic jobs both before and after completing his CIRM postdoctoral research fellowship, with dramatically different results.
“[After completing my CIRM postdoctoral fellowship,] this time was completely different, because I had publications, and I had written clinical trials,” he said. “I got a whole different level of job options. If I had just finished my regular clinical fellowship and not done a postdoc, it would have been hard for me to get access to the type of job that I wanted to do in academic medicine. That’s what the CIRM funding and the CIRM imprimatur allowed me to accomplish. So it made a huge difference.”
Plikus also considers his USC CIRM postdoctoral fellowship as essential for securing his position at the University of California, Irvine, where he is now a Professor of Developmental and Cell Biology studying skin and hair regeneration, and the holder of a patent for generating human cartilage.
“The CIRM funding … actually ended up producing a couple of really important papers, including one Science paper that was essential for me to get my faculty job,” said Plikus. “So in that sense, for my career, this was critical.”
The program has also produced 12 other faculty members at top-tier institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and other top universities across the U.S. and globe.
Joanna Smeeton is the H.K. Corning Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine Research at Columbia University. After being supported by a CIRM grant for two years of her postdoctoral training in Gage Crump’s lab at USC, she earned the prestigious National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Award, also known as the K99/R00, which supported her transition from the postdoctoral to the faculty stage of her career. She then went on as a faculty member to compete for a prestigious NIH Director’s DP2 Innovator Award for her work on ligament regeneration.
According to Smeeton, who is originally from Canada, the CIRM funding provided a crucial bridge, especially because it is one of the only funding opportunities available to international postdocs.
“That training grant was instrumental to my career success, because I came in as an international postdoc, and international postdocs aren’t eligible for a lot of the funding from NIH and other foundation sources,” she said. “It was the first major fellowship I had gotten for this research into osteoarthritis and joints. So the training grant did exactly what it was designed to do, because it set the foundations for what we’re doing now in my lab.”
The Product of their Training
An additional 35 percent of USC’s CIRM training program alumni work in the biotechnology and pharma industries at Merck, Amgen, Abbott, Takeda and many other companies.
Now the Scientific Director at Allogene Therapeutics in San Francisco, Suhasni Gopalakrishnan completed her CIRM-supported postdoctoral training in the labs of Neil Segil and Justin Ichida at USC. Originally from India, Gopalakrishnan echoes Smeeton’s appreciation for the unique opportunity offered by the CIRM training program for international postdocs.
“The CIRM grant was a boon to many, many people, especially because it didn’t have any specification of immigration status, because a lot of the NIH grants can have that as a requirement,” said Gopalakrishnan. “These days, it’s even more concerning in terms of funding for a lot of members of the immigrant community that come here for better opportunities. So the CIRM grants really helped support a broad range of students and postdocs to help further research in the regenerative medicine area.”
Guanyi Huang enjoyed the support of a CIRM training grant during his PhD studies in Qi-Long Ying’s lab at USC, and now works as an Associate Principal Scientist at Merck in San Francisco.
“The CIRM training grant really is wonderful for first-year and second-year PhD students, because I didn’t have to work as a teaching assistant and could focus a hundred percent in the lab to really get myself ready as an independent researcher,” he said. “There were also a lot of opportunities to share your posters and your findings and experiments with other folks, and to communicate them [at conferences and] just basically get in touch with the core stem cell community. As a young PhD student at that time, it was really helpful.”
Vivian Medina completed both her PhD and CIRM-funded postdoctoral training in the lab of Bangyan Stiles at USC, and now works as a Senior Manager for Digital and Data Analytics at Takeda in Los Angeles. Even though her current role focuses on protein plasma-based therapies, USC and the CIRM training program taught her broadly useful skills for her career in biotech.
“My journey at USC did help establish those very core skills to run a lab and to understand basic research, to be able to come here,” she said. “Even though here we are creating protein plasma-based therapies, the science translates.”
Jack of All Trades, Master of Stem Cells
Seventeen percent of USC’s CIRM training program alumni are medical professionals in fields such as oncology, cardiology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, and newborn medicine. An additional seven percent of alumni are pursuing careers in science communications, public health, policy, regulatory affairs, entrepreneurship, teaching, and a range of other fields.
“Our CIRM training program has a demonstrable track record of cultivating versatile, high-impact professionals—individuals who not only meet current industry needs, but who create new directions in science, medicine and policy,” said Mariani. “Our alumni have gone on to hold influential positions across academia, industry, clinical practice and government. Many are now faculty members shaping the next generation, scientists leading cutting-edge research, directors at biotech firms guiding product development, and physician-scientists translating discoveries into patient care. They are not just workforce participants—they are leaders, educators and innovators.”
Carolyn Meltzer, dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, added: “We are grateful to the CIRM Scholars program for creating a lasting legacy of education and training that has advanced stem cell research in California and throughout the world.”