Are Stem Cells Ready for Prime Time? FDA March 8 Grand Rounds Webcast Unveils Research Advances in Regenerative Medicine, CE Credit available

Register for the Mar. 8, 2018 FDA Grand Rounds to learn about... What FDA research in regenerative medicine is revealing about stem cell-based cellular therapies

Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018 12:00 p.m. ‒ 1:00 p.m. Register here for the webcast: CE Credit available.  Presented by: Steven Bauer, Ph.D. Chief, Cellular and Tissue Therapy Division of Cellular and Gene Therapies FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Stem cell-based cellular therapies hold tremendous promise for treating a wide variety of medical conditions, from repairing heart, nerve, and brain damage to treating diabetes.  However, the use of stem cell-based products is new and characterizing the product still faces hurdles.  FDA’s Dr. Steven Bauer and his lab are conducting research into identifying cell therapy product characteristics that will predict the reliably of the performance of cell-based therapies in humans.  FDA is concerned with lot release characteristics of identity, purity, and potency, which constitute quality attributes.  Ideally, these attributes are related to a given cell preparation’s ability to perform the desired biological function--and result in the intended clinical effect.   But for many investigational stem-cell based products, we don’t know if the measurements we use to characterize products will predict their clinical effectiveness.  For stem-cell-based clinical trial proposals submitted to FDA, the products are characterized using a small number of cell surface markers and simple measures of cell product activity.   The regulatory science question before FDA is whether or not the characteristics that are measured in product testing are predictive of clinical outcomes.  Dr. Bauer’s presentation will describe FDA’s multipotent stromal cell (MSC) Consortium and his research efforts to develop strategies that will result in cell characterization methods that can predict quality, potency, and safety of MSCs.  This research could have implications for other types of stem cells and cell-based products in general.