CIRM and Timelines
The draft strategic plan (PDF) developed by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) provides another confirmation of the conventional wisdom regarding timelines for the next generation of stem cell therapies. From SignOnSanDiego.com: "The proposed strategic plan includes five and ten year goals, and a breakdown of the money that will be spent on a multitude of research areas. Since bringing a new product to market can take up to a dozen years and $1 billion - not to mention the millions of dollars that can be spent only to have a drug fail - the committee said it does not expect to be able to fully fund a stem cell therapy and bring it to market. But it does expect to help fund some early-stage clinical trials to establish proof of concept of new therapies using animal models, and some small, safety trials in humans." Medical research and development will never be as fast as we would all like it to be, even outside the realm of wasteful government spending; this sort of timeline is much as expected.
Link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/biotech/20061004-9999-bn05stems.html