IAP Statement on Regenerative Medicine
World academies’ put regenerative medicine opportunities and challenges in the spotlight. A new IAP Statement highlights medical opportunities in addressing the causes of disease and warns against the misuse of regenerative medicine technologies – also when it comes to the proposed use of stem cells to tackle COVID-19
Regenerative medicine, including the use of tissue engineering and cell and gene therapies, has great potential for tissue regeneration and repair. The pace of advance in this interdisciplinary science is exciting and the medical opportunities in addressing the causes of disease rather than the symptoms may be transformative. However, there are growing concerns about the misuse of regenerative medicine technologies.
This is why the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), a global network whose more than 140 member academies constitute more than 30,000 leading scientists, engineers and health professionals in over 100 countries, issued the IAP Statement on Regenerative Medicine.
The main priorities emphasised in the document are:
- to use advances in research and development as rapidly as possible, safely and equitably, to provide new routes to patient benefit, and
- to support medical claims by robust and replicable evidence so that patients and the public are not misled.