Sachin Jagdale – Bangalore
The ninth edition of STEM 2013 which recently concluded in Bangalore saw scientists from across the globe attending the event. The annual meeting of the Society For Regenerative Medicine Tissue Engineering (SRMTE), STEM 2013 was a forum for basic scientists, clinicians, students, law firms and technology companies to exchange ideas and present advances in the area of stem cells and regenerative medicine. This was slightly different from a usual scientific meeting due to the breadth of topics covered in the area of regenerative medicine. There was also ample time for deliberation of various issues including regulatory hurdles faced by cell therapy companies in India.
Researchers involved in cell-based therapies from different countries like France, Argentina and Brazil provided the useful inputs about the regulatory scenario for these therapies in their home countries. As a result of these deliberations SRMTE provides useful inputs to the regulatory agencies for approval of cell based therapies.
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“This meeting reminded me of the World Stem Cell Summit held in the US in December 2012, which also provided a forum for stem cell companies, regulators and patient advocates to discuss issues related to stem cells. STEM 2013 also had excellent presentations on basic biology of stem cells, results from clinical trials involving stem cells as well as intellectual property management and venture capital (VC) funding landscape for stem cell companies. Presentations by Indian researchers also showed that they are aware and tackling these research and therapy issues with a similar understanding and enthusiasm as researchers in other countries,” said Dr Vivek Tanavde, Principal Investigator, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Bioinformatics Institute (BII), Singapore.
India has one of the most talented pool of scientists to its credit and holds potential of becoming stem cell research hub of the world. However, according to Dr SGA Rao, CMD, International Stem Cell Services, unless the Indian Government proactively supports stem cell research, Indian scientists would find it difficult to prove themselves in the international arena.
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Rao said, “Stem cell therapy is slowly and steadily shifting from hype to reality. Stem cells have shown a great promise in the treatment of some of the disease categories. However, the Government should come clean over guidelines/ regulations for stem cell research. The Government still considers stem cell research as an experiment. This approach has hindered a growth of stem cell research in India.”
While giving low-downs of stem cell research in India, Dr Aroop Kumar Dutta, Managing Director, ExCel Matrix Biological Devices, said, “There has been a major development in the awareness about stem cell mostly due to media in the past decade. On the R&D front, initiatives are restricted to large corporates due to the limitations of an investment in advance and infrastructure needed. All small stakeholders are left with the choice of unscrupulous practices like injecting some kind of stem cell population hoping to make a clinically observable difference. Patients will always be desperately hopeful.”
He adds, “My suggestion is to make a compulsory audit of procedure and techniques of therapy (mandatory by law) once an organisation undertakes propaganda/ advertising for ‘stem cell therapy’ in any form in any type of media. This will deter those who are not law abiding from fleecing patients with this ‘experimental therapy’ and government grants in the name of research and development.”
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