CA: State stem cell board member asked to quit over apparent conflict

SFGate.com ^ | 11/22/07 | Sabin Russell

[NormsRevenge]

A prominent member of the governing board for California's stem cell agency may have violated state conflict-of-interest rules last summer when he tried to reverse a decision rejecting a grant proposal by a scientist who works for him at the Burnham Institute of Medical Research in La Jolla (San Diego County).

The miscue has prompted calls for Burnham Institute chief executive Dr. John Reed to resign from the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, the board that governs the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

"If indeed Dr. Reed has violated the law, then I think he ought to consider resigning," said Jeff Sheehy, a colleague of Reed's on the oversight committee. Sheehy is a spokesman for the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, but serves on the governing board solely as a citizen representative for patients.

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On Aug. 2, Reed wrote a seven-page letter to Arlene Chiu, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine's chief scientific officer, appealing the rejection of a $638,000 grant that would have gone to the Burnham Institute to pay for a project by an affiliated researcher.

Reed now acknowledges the intervention was a mistake. Under conflict-of-interest rules set for the state-funded agency, board members are prohibited from discussing funding requests from organizations they represent.

--snip--

Reed sent the letter at the suggestion of Robert Klein, the chairman of the governing board on which Reed serves. In an interview with The Chronicle on Wednesday, Klein said his advice was an inadvertent error on his part.

"I told him to send them a letter to tell them what the correct facts were," Klein said. "I clearly did that."

Klein said that, in fact, Reed's letter was never seen by the scientific team. "Our firewall worked," he said. "The influence didn't change anyone's mind, because the letter wasn't even considered."