Stem Cell Medicine: The Opportunity


The capacity to use stem cells to more accurately model human disease will increase understanding of the disease mechanism and improve the drug development pipeline. The ability to use stem cell-derived tissues from patients to test drug efficacy in a personalised fashion will more accurately target the right treatment to the right patient.

Photo: Stem cell medicine pipeline and potential products, indicating relative timing of outcomes from left to right (click to enlarge).
Photo: Stem cell medicine pipeline and potential products, indicating the relative timing of outcomes from left to right (click to enlarge).


The future of stem cell medicine


Stem cell medicine provides a unique and timely opportunity to accelerate the bench-to-clinic pipeline. Stem cells in disease modeling, regenerative medicine, and designer cells, provide potential new options for the current treatment gaps. Regenerative medicine and designer cells promise new treatments for both chronic degenerative and inherited disease while stem cell disease modeling will improve drug development and drive personalised medicine.

Such stem cell medicines will be transformative, representing a genuine frontier in medicine as well as an exciting opportunity for economic growth. This is not simply through regenerative therapies, but also via the development of more accurate models of human disease for the development of personalised therapies and improved drug development, and as a platform for the application of advanced gene editing to generate new stem cell types with therapeutic advantage.