World Stem Cell Summit highlights advances in regenerative medicine

An organizer of the World Stem Cell Summit says one of the key problems medical researchers face these days is how to apply their findings in the real world. "How do you take the phenomenal scientific research going on in labs and translate it into medical treatments,?" said Bernie Siegel, the founder and co-chair of the summit and executive director of the Genetic Policy Institute, which organized the event. "It's a big job to do this, and more than just the science," Siegel said, noting that in a growing field now moving beyond basic lab research, the aim is to connect the people who do the work with those who finance it. The three-day summit, which opened Monday in Pasadena, features more than 150 top international speakers and 50 hours of programming with leaders from science, pharmaceutics, business, policy, ethics, law and other fields. The cell therapy industry, a "nascent" field, has emerged to be a potentially multi-billion business with unlimited potential, Siegel said. Stephen Dalton, a University of Georgia professor, reported that one of the biggest developments in stem cell research in the past year was the realization that cells can be transdifferentiated from one state to another without returning to a pluripotent state. Dalton said the principle was previously supported by a few isolated examples but it was not until 2010 that the idea was widely accepted. Mark Sussman, a professor from San Diego State University, called the identification of lung stem cells from human tissue samples capable of regenerating the highly complex and specialized structures of mature lungs a breakthrough in lung biology and regenerative medicine. He said results presented by the Anversa group in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that human lung stem cells can be expanded in vitro and also retain the capacity to integrate into adult tissue upon introduction into mice. The study, Sussman said, has opened up an entirely new field of possibilities for lung regeneration and potential therapeutic applications for many conditions where treatment options are either very limited or nonexistent.