* ยง 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; provided, however,
that the board shall not make any grants on or after April first, two
thousand twenty-one.
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.
* NB Repealed December 31, 2025