The move follows a jam-packed and
emotional meeting last month in which the CIRM governing board faced a record outpouring of appeals of negative decisions by grant
reviewers. The board is the ultimate arbiter on applications. While it almost never overturns positive decisions by reviewers, it sometimes
approves applications that they have rejected. 

No details of the proposed changes in
the appeal process are yet available for the meeting Sept. 5-6 in
Burlingame, Ca. All that is known at this point is the following item
from the board agenda: “consideration of modifications to the
extraordinary petition policy and adoption of additional
information policy.” Extraordinary petitions are the key vehicle
for appeals.

The appeals process has long troubled the CIRM board. It has made changes in the procedures, but last
month's high stakes, $243 million round posed new challenges and
consumed so much time that the board was unable to complete action on
several items.

As a result of the July appeals, the
board sent five applications back for re-review. (See here, here and
here.) Some of those are expected to come up next week and others at
the end of October. The board agenda, however, did not specify which
applications would be considered next week. Nor did it specify how many additional appeals have been filed in the round that was up for
approval in July.