Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The president of California’s $3 billion stem cell agency said Tuesday that he would resign at month’s end rather than in June as previously announced.
Zach Hall said his abrupt departure was due to his diagnosis of prostate cancer and the “exceedingly contentious and occasionally personal tone” of a recent meeting with officials over the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine‘s plans to dole out $300 million for laboratory construction.
Hall said the bitter meeting led him to conclude that “it is in both my best interest and that of the Institute for me to step down at this time.”
The dispute centered on how quickly to dole out the grants. Hall wanted to work at a faster pace than some of the other officials deciding the issue.
“Hall’s health should be a primary concern,” said John Simpson of the Foundation For Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which has been a vocal critic of the agency. “But clearly there are substantial disagreements at stake here. It’s never a good sign when an agency’s chief executive leaves after a policy dispute.”
Hall, 69, also said be would undergo surgery in May and that his prognosis is good.
Hall, who was appointed in March 2005, has been the institute’s only president since it was created under Proposition 71, a 2004 initiative approved by California voters.
The institute, the nation’s biggest financial backer of human embryonic research, is authorized to dole out $3 billion in research grants.
A neuroscientist by training, Hall has held a number of high-ranking administrative posts in government and academia.
From 1994 to 1997, he was director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes at the National Institutes of Health. Before that, Hall headed the neurobiology department at the University of California at San Francisco. He returned to UCSF in 1997 and became executive vice chancellor.
He left UCSF again in 2001 to launch the biotechnology company EnVivo Pharmaceuticals, served as chief executive there, then joined USC‘s Keck School of Medicine in 2002 to be its associate dean or medical research. He left USC to take over as the stem cell institute’s president.
