Cellular Therapy – Trials and Technology

While some cellular therapies are long established in medicine e.g. blood transfusion or bone marrow transplant, in the last 20 years research activity in cellular therapy has intensified dramatically. Activity has increased particularly in the areas of regenerative medicine, cancer, immune deficiency and transplantation. This is in part driven by the demands of the changing demography in industrialised society with degenerative conditions such as diabetes, liver and heart disease on the increase. Reducing complex laboratory research products to clinically-acceptable therapeutics has significant challenges. In this presentation I will review the biological challenges present in a number of developing cellular therapies and how biotechnological approaches can be used to improve these therapies and accelerate their first use in human trials.