Stem-cell researchers are hiring. Credit: CORBIS

With the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) in its third year of doling out research grants, stem-cell scientists are starting to see the benefits of the 2004 ballot measure that gave the state a stem-cell research windfall. These advantages have not been limited to established researchers: the money is also giving postdocs rare opportunities, not only in terms of funding but also by providing avenues to independence.

The San Francisco-based institute, which was set up by the 2004 vote, announced on 29 April that it would give US$28 million to support 17 basic stem-cell-biology grants. Other grants awaiting disbursal this year focus on transplantation immunology and clinical development. Voters approved stem-cell funding of $3 billion over 10 years; to date, the CIRM has disbursed about $1 billion.

Grants from the CIRM, including two training grants for graduate students, postdocs and clinical fellows, have given some early carer researchers quicker grant turnaround times and sought-after routes to independence. Aileen Anderson, an associate professor at the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, says that her lab will soon hire two new postdocs as a direct result of her $1.28 million, three-year CIRM grant. More significantly, she says, the grant has allowed her to create a co-investigator position for her most senior postdoc, Hal Nguyen. “A lot of postdocs are stuck — they can't move on because of the hiring freezes at many universities,” says Anderson, noting that Nguyen wants his own lab. “Now he has a glimmer of hope,” she says. The grants require that recipients work in California, but collaborators can be anywhere.

The CIRM's quick turnaround is important for postdocs, grant recipients say. Postdocs who apply to the US National Institutes of Health often endure long waiting times, and grants may not come through until the postdoc has moved on to a new position. “Here, a postdoc can develop an idea and see it funded in a rapid way. I've never seen that before,” says Garry Nolan, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Baxter Laboratory in Stem Cell Biology at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Nolan and his colleague Marius Wernig received a $1.45-million four-year grant, for which Nolan's postdoc, Eli Zunder, co-wrote the application. Zunder had thought of and developed the study idea — to examine pathway structures in specialized cells dedifferentiating into stem cells — on his own. “It grew directly out of his project,” says Nolan. At Stanford, postdocs are not allowed to apply for grants, but Nolan says that Zunder's grant-writing experience will prove useful in future.

Such benefits for postdocs are unlikely to slow for the next five years, according to a CIRM-funded economic-impact study conducted in 2008 by The Analysis Group,an economic and financial consulting agency headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The study authors analysed the 229 CIRM grants awarded up to September 2008 and found that each recipient, including 45 senior researchers recruited from outside California, had hired or planned to hire about 10 researchers, including postdocs. A new economic impact study commissioned by the CIRM has not yet been released.