In this eighth installment of this series, we introduce cooperative and organizational efforts to approach challenges in the glycosciences that would be difficult to solve by individual researchers, labs, or projects.
Regenerative medicine is one of many areas of modern medical care leveraging cutting-edge translational research. If cellular therapy is included in regenerative medicine, it has a substantially long history. The change in focus of researchers from embryology originally to regenerative medicine boosted the academic development of this field. Finally, the discovery of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in 2006-2007 greatly pushed regenerative medical research forward, and with no exaggeration, regenerative medicine became a reality in practice. To promote the speedy and safe provision of regenerative medicine in Japan, The Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine went into effect and The Act on Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices was amended in 2014. This enabled the quick and smooth supply of many regenerative medical products.
A clinical trial of cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) started from 2018 in Japan. Induced pluripotent stem cells have “pluripotency”, which means the ability to become many different cell types in the whole body, and also high proliferative activity. In Parkinson’s disease (PD), many dopamine neurons in the brain are lost. To compensate the lost dopamine neurons, iPSC-derived dopamine neurons are transplanted by cell therapy. To derive the dopamine neurons from iPSCs, the cells are cultured with many inducing factors. The induction technology has been developed through the intensive researches applying the knowledge from developmental biology. In the future, it is necessary to evaluate the results of clinical trials that has just started in countries around the world. Cell transplantation using iPSCs is expected to be a new treatment option for various diseases including PD.
