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Stem cells head to the clinic: treatments for cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's

More than 100 clinical trials put stem cells for regenerative medicine to the test. It’s a turning point for a field beset with ethical and political controversy.

Following decades of intense research that has at times triggered ethical and political controversy, the safety and potential of stem cells for tissue regeneration is now being widely tested. “The outcomes for patients were strikingly similar even though procedures were carried out at different sites around the country,” says Arnold Kriegstein at the University of California, San Francisco, who is a co-founder of Neurona Therapeutics. Other organs don’t have the same immune privilege, yet are responsible for some of the most burdensome diseases, including heart failure as well as type 1 diabetes, which is caused by the destruction of insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas.

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