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California Institute Appoints Willerson
to Advise
on Stem Cell Research
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has selected James T. Willerson, M.D., as one of nine scientists and clinicians to serve on its Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group (Standards Working Group).
Willerson, who is president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and president-elect of the Texas Heart Institute, was appointed May 6 by the CIRM’s Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee (ICOC).
The 19-member Standards Working Group, which also includes medical ethicists and patient advocates, makes recommendations to the ICOC on scientific, medical and ethical standards on stem cell research, as mandated by the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act. Members of the Standards Working Group were chosen from over 50 applicants, based on their expertise in biomedical ethics related to stem cell research and clinical or lab-based experience administering protocols related to stem cell research.
“This is a truly distinguished group,” said Zach Hall, CIRM interim president. “They will advise us to insure that research sponsored by CIRM is carried out according to the highest medical and ethical standards.”
Willerson holds the Edward Randall III Chair in Internal Medicine and the Alkek/Williams Distinguished Professorship at the health science center. His current research includes the use of stem cells to improve severely damaged heart tissue.
Willerson and colleagues at the Texas Heart Institute now lead one of the first Food and Drug Administration approved clinical trials to treat patients with end-stage heart disease using their own bone marrow-derived stem cells. Differentiation of one type of peripheral blood cell into heart muscle cells has been demonstrated in work by Willerson and Edward Yeh, M.D., director of the Research Center for Cardiovascular Diseases at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases.