About $36 million was awarded to local researchers by the state's stem cell program on Wednesday.

The grants to the region's large biomedical industry made up more than half of the $67.7 million awarded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. This batch of grants were awarded to advance basic research into patient care:

- Inder Verma of the Salk Institute received $6.64 million to develop treatments for incurable blood and immune system diseases. One of those is X-linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy disease."

- Jeanne Loring of The Scripps Research Institute got $6.29 million to produce safety measures for stem cells being considered for human therapy.

- Martin Friedlander of The Scripps Research Institute got $5.95 million for treatment of macular degeneration.

- Justine Cunningham of Novocell, Inc. got $5.4 million for methods of eliminating tumor-producing cells from human embryonic stem cells.

- Yang Xu of UC San Diego got $5.17 million to develop a mouse with a human immune system, to study problems in transplanting stem cells into patients.

- Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute got $3.56 million for treatment of Parkinson's disease.

- Darryl D'Lima of The Scripps Research Institute got $3.12 million for cartilage replacement and treating osteoarthritis.

Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at (760) 739-6641 or bfikes@nctimes.com. Read his blogs at bizblogs.nctimes.com.