‘Regenerative medicine’ and stem cell therapies hold potential for disease treatments despite grim headlines

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Grim stories about the abuse of regenerative medicine and stem cell therapies have been in the headlines. Hundreds of international stem cell clinics now hawk unproven, unregulated therapies to desperate people…But while these stories…deserve our attention and regulatory oversight, we shouldn’t let them detract from the positive forward motion of regenerative medicine and the very real potential for individual patients and the national economy.

The next wave of regenerative medicine research is tackling head-on enormous health care issues: AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, blood cancers, blindness — the list goes on.

Every day, positive advances are quietly being put forth by academia and industry: Stanford researchers repaired the gene that causes sickle cell disease; researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have identified a human lung stem cell that is self-renewing; an international team of top-notch researchers identified a new mechanism to sharpen memory during aging.

The list of successes should, I hope, eclipse the painful stories of rogue cell stem clinics taking advantage of vulnerable patients. We must prevent charlatans from clouding the picture and undermining the future of biomedical research just as we must prevent false therapies from entering the marketplace.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Reviving optimism for regenerative medicine

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