265-a. Empire state stem cell board. 1. The empire state stem cell board ("board"), comprised of a funding committee and an ethics committee, both of which shall be chaired by the commissioner, is hereby created within the department for the purpose of administering the empire state stem cell trust fund ("fund"), created pursuant to section ninety-nine-p of the state finance law. The board is hereby empowered, subject to annual appropriations and other funding authorized or made available, to make grants to basic, applied, translational or other research and development activities that will advance scientific discoveries in fields related to stem cell biology.
2. No grants made available in the fund from any source shall be directly or indirectly utilized for research involving human reproductive cloning.
3. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the board shall have the authority to adopt by laws to govern its proceedings including but not limited to rules respecting quorums and the number of votes needed to require the award of grants. No grants may be awarded by the board prior to the establishment of bylaws that must include merit based peer review application guidelines. Such bylaws must be approved by the funding committee.
4. Grants may be made for one or more years, provided, however, that no grant shall be made for which the annual commitment is more than fifteen percent of the total funds available in any year. However, no single institution shall be awarded more than twenty-five percent of the total amount appropriated. This limitation shall be considered separately for each new proposal without aggregating any prior year approvals that may fund research activities. This requirement shall be determinative, unless two-thirds of the funding committee approves a higher limit for a particular grantee.
5. The existence of the empire state stem cell board shall continue until there are no longer any assets or money available for distribution.
Last modified: February 3, 2019