NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY VOLUME 25 NUMBER 5 MAY 2007 513 Proposition 71 and CIRM—assessing the return on investment Michael T Longaker, Laurence C Baker & Henry T Greely Given that Californian voters authorized state coffers to sell $3 billion in bonds to fund the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) with the expectation of health and financial benefits, what benchmarks should be used to measure the initiative’s success? T he passage of Proposition 71 on November 2, 2004, in California created CIRM, which is authorized to borrow funds to support up to $300 million per year in grants for ten years to explore human embryonic stem (hES) cell research. To generate support for the mea- sure, proponents held out varied benefits for Californians, from the possibility of new cures for diseases, to economic growth from attract- ing new companies and researchers, to royalty revenue for the state government. Since then, several other states have passed similar policies with similar goals. Here, we review key com- ponents of the health and financial benefits Californians may have expected from the addi- tional research funding and develop a frame- work for evaluating the success of California’s bold initiative at meeting those goals, while navigating other important concerns, such as intellectual property (IP). The rationale for benchmarking Efforts should be made to evaluate the impacts of CIRM funding. The voters of California should be able to obtain information about the returns on their investment. Balancing the clear and significant costs for those who would fund expensive new research against the often uncertain, but also often potentially large, societal and scientific benefits is an important challenge for public scientific policy. We believe that when public funds are allocated to massive scientific undertakings, at least in part on the basis of promised tangible benefits, the benefits that do result from the funding should be mea- sured and evaluated. Proposition 71 contained its own extensive financial audit provisions, but the measure did not propose going beyond evaluating the mechanisms by which CIRM spends money to study the more complex, but ultimately very important, question of how much value it buys for that money. The concept of going beyond the routine financial auditing of CIRM to study the complex issues of how much Proposition 71 buys for the investment has now been incorporated into the CIRM stra- tegic plan released in October 2006 (ref. 1). On pages 95–96 of the plan, a $2.3 million dollar initiative is proposed to assess the economic impact of stem cell research. There are few existing markers that can guide those who would seek to track whether or not the voters of California will eventually reap a return on their investment. Below, we outline several potentially relevant issues that Michael T. Longaker is in the Department of Surgery, Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine, 257 Campus Drive West, Stanford, California 94305, USA; Laurence C. Baker is in the Department of Health Research and Policy, School of Medicine, Stanford University Redwood Bldg, T110 Stanford, California 94305, USA; and Henry T. Greely is at the Stanford Law School, Stanford, California 94305, USA. e-mail: longaker@stanford.edu The ‘batting average’ of programs funded by The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (administrative headquarters pictured here behind the statue of San Francisco Giants baseball great Willie Mays) will likely be of keen interest to Californian voters. Howard Lipin/Zuma Press/Newscom COMMENTARY © 2007 Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/naturebiotechnology