Meet the stem cell agency President C. Randal Mills

Stem cell agency President C. Randal Mills (left) and Chair of the Board Jonathan Thomas

As you probably have heard by now we have a new President at the stem cell agency. In late April, after a nationwide search, our governing Board appointed C. Randal Mills, PhD, to take over from Alan Trounson who has led the agency for the last six years, and is standing down to spend more time with his family in Australia.

Randy comes to us with a track record of success in stem cell research. For the last ten years he has been the President and CEO of Osiris Therapeutics. He helped the company develop Prochymal, used for the treatment of acute graft-vs-host disease in children, a devastating complication of bone marrow transplantation that can be fatal. He is also well known to many of the staff at the stem cell agency, having served as a member of our Grants Working Group review panel for the past five years, helping decide which projects are the most promising and therefore most deserving of funding.

Now we want to introduce him to you.

We are a publicly funded agency so we want to make sure the public gets a chance to know the person who is leading us. That’s why we are holding three events over the next month to give Patient Advocates, researchers, supporters and anyone who is interested a chance to come and hear Randy talk about his vision for the agency and his goals for the future. And of course we want to give you a chance to ask him questions.

Those events are:
• San Francisco: Monday, June 9th from 6 – 7pm at our offices on 210 King Street, San Francisco, CA 94107. We are located between 3rd and 4th streets, there is good muni bus service to the area and we are just one block from the Caltrain Terminal at 700 4th Street.
• Los Angeles: Tuesday, June 10th from 6 – 7pm at the Eli & Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The address there is 1425 San Pablo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033.
• San Diego: Tuesday, June 24th from 6 – 7pm at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, 1 Market Place, San Diego, CA 92101. This is going to be held at the same time as the BIO 2014 conference so we are meeting in the Grand Hyatt, in the Gaslamp rooms A & B.

At each event we will provide light refreshments.

 I do hope you will join us.

kevin mccormack