A stem cell ther­a­py preps de­but in Japan­ese mar­ket to the dis­may of US re­searchers

As Japan ap­proves a stem cell treat­ment for spinal cord in­juries in a land­mark — if lit­tle no­ticed — de­ci­sion, ex­perts around the world have voiced con­cerns that un­der­score the trou­ble that still plague first-gen stem cell ther­a­pies.

Com­ment­ing at the re­quest of Na­ture News, 10 spe­cial­ists in stem cell sci­ence or spinal cord in­juries poke holes in the small clin­i­cal tri­al that formed the ba­sis of the con­di­tion­al ap­proval, ques­tion­ing both the ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty of the treat­ment.

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