Grant Reviewer Conflict in $40 Million Round at California Stem Cell Agency

By Dr. Matthew Watson

Internationally renown scientist Lee
Hood, winner of a National Medal of Science, violated the conflict of
interest policies of the California stem cell agency earlier this
year when he was involved in reviewing applications in a $40 million round to create genomics centers in California.

Lee Hood
Institute of Systems Biology photo

The agency quietly disclosed the
February violation in letters dated April 2 to the leadership of the
California Legislature. The letter (full text below)
said that Hood “agreed that there was a conflict of interest that
he had overlooked.”

The conflict of interest involved a $24
million application that included participation by another eminent
scientist, Irv Weissman of Stanford University, and funding for facilities at
Stanford.

Hood owns property jointly with
Weissman in Montana. In 2008, San Francisco Magazine, in a well-reported piece on the ballot measure that created the stem cell
agency, described the property as a ranch and Hood as Weissman's
“good buddy.” Hood has co-authored research papers with
Weissman. Both are on the scientific advisory board of Cellerant
Therapeutics, Inc., of San Carlos, Ca., a firm co-founded by
Weissman. Hood's nonprofit firm, Institute for Systems Biology in
Seattle, lists Stanford as a partner in the genetics of aging in humans. At Stanford, Weissman is director of the Institute
for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, whose research
involves aging. Weissman also serves on the Hood's institute's scientific advisory board.

Hood has not responded to an inquiry
yesterday by the California Stem Cell Report for his perspective on
the conflict of interest matter.

The conflict was not discovered by the
agency during the review. It was raised by another reviewer at the
end of the review, which, for the first time in CIRM history, failed
to conclude with a decision supporting any of the proposals.
Reviewers' comments have been sent back to applicants with another
review scheduled for November. The agency said Hood will not take
part in that session.

CIRM spokesman Kevin McCormack said
today that Hood's conflict was “clearly a case of a new reviewer
making an innocent error.” McCormack said it was not a violation of
the state's conflict of interest law. The agency's conflict policies
go beyond economic issues and deal with personal and professional
conflicts.

The agency's letter to the state legislative leadership said,

“Dr. Hood had not previously
participated in a meeting of the GWG(grant review group), and as a
result, he was not familiar with CIRM’s conflict of interest
policy, particularly the policy’s inclusion of 'personal' conflicts of interest. Thus, when he completed the conflict of
interest form for the Genomics Awards review, he inadvertently
neglected to indicate that he had a personal relationship with an
investigator who was involved in one component of a joint application
submitted by two institutions. Dr. Hood and the investigator are
close personal friends and their families own vacation property
together. Because of his personal relationship with the
investigator, Dr. Hood had a conflict of interest with respect to the
joint application under CIRM’s conflict of interest policies.”

The agency's letter said that Weissman would have received $11,000 over five years under the terms of the application, but that it also involved "creation of a data center at one institution and three research projects that would be undertaken at (Weissman's) institution (Stanford).

The California Stem Cell Report asked the agency about the involvement of CIRM President Alan Trounson, who has
been a guest at the Montana ranch, and whether he recruited Hood as a
reviewer. Last year, Trounson excused himself from participating in
public discussion of another application involving Weissman.

McCormack said,

“Alan helps recruit many reviewers,
including in this case Dr. Hood, but he is not involved in assigning
reviewers to individual applications.”

The conflict of interest involving Hood
was easily detectable in routine searches on the Internet, including
a Google search on the search term “lee hood irv weissman.” The first
two entries in that search yesterday turned up serious red flags.

Asked whether the agency performed “any
sort of serious examination” of the confidential statements of
interests filed by reviewers prior to review sessions, McCormack said,

“Yes, we do a serious examination of
statements of interest from all our reviewers. However, this conflict
was not identified by the reviewer either in the financial disclosure
statement or identified in the conflict of interest list. Normally we
do not check Google for all possible combinations of 15 GWG reviewers
times about 200 individuals listed in these applications. That would
be about 3000 independent Google searches to identify a possible
conflict.”

The agency's legislative letter said
that it plans to “amend its regulations to add greater clarity in
an effort to prevent future conflicts from arising and to augment its
efforts to educate reviewers, particularly new reviewers.”

Our take?

This is the latest in a series of
questionable activities involving the stem cell agency, which is
trying to come up with a plan to sustain itself after its state
funding runs out in 2017(see here, here and here). The agency is
giving more-than-serious consideration to an effort to raise funds
from the private sector, which can lead to new and more difficult
ethical considerations than a state-funded agency would normally face.

What these questionable activities
demonstrate is that the $3 billion agency needs to give much more
thought, to put it mildly, to its policies ranging from conflicts of
interest to incompatible employee/director activities to the conduct
of top management in providing special treatment for donors.

It also is clear that the statements of
interests of reviewers are not examined closely for their accuracy by
CIRM staff and attorneys. McCormack's remarks clearly indicate that
the agency does not think it has time to be sure that no conflicts
exist among its plethora of reviewers. That is precisely the reason
reviewers' statements of interests – economic, professional and
personal – should be made public rather than kept under wraps
by CIRM. Then, interested parties, presumably mainly applicants, can
check a panel of reviewers, if they wish, for conflicts in a
particular round. Obviously, the agency can and should withhold the
names of reviewers examining a specific application – the release
of the names on the panel in a given review session is sufficient.

Tomorrow the CIRM governing board's
evaluation subcommittee meets privately to discuss Alan Trounson's
performance. It appears to be the second part of an evaluation
process that began last October. Trounson's involvement with Weissman
and Hood -- and his actions in connection with a $21,630 gift from a member of the public, albeit a not-so-ordinary member of the public
-- should also be on the evaluation subcommittee agenda.

California Stem Cell Agency Letter Re Lee Hood Conflict

Source:
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