Event Title

Are Stem Cells Ready for Prime Time? A Look at FDA Research Advances in Regenerative Medicine

Thursday, March 8, 2018
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. EST

Presented by

Steven Bauer, Ph.D.
Chief, Cellular and Tissue Therapy
Division of Cellular and Gene Therapies
FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

Webcast Lecture

Are Stem Cells Ready for Prime Time? A Look at FDA Research Advances in Regenerative Medicine

About the Presentation

Stem cell-based cellular therapies are being actively developed and hold tremendous promise for treating a wide variety of medical conditions, from diabetes to heart disease and joint repair. However, the use of stem cell-based products is new and characterizing the product is challenging. Specifically, FDA is conducting research into identifying cell therapy product characteristics that will predict the reliably of the performance of cell-based therapies in humans. In many cases, this is a challenge that is largely unresolved.

FDA is concerned with lot release characteristics of identity, purity, and potency, which constitute quality attributes. Ideally, these attributes are related to a given cell preparation’s ability to perform the desired biological function--and result in the intended clinical effect.

For many investigational stem-cell based products, we currently don’t know if the measurements we use to characterize products will predict their clinical effectiveness. For stem-cell-based clinical trial proposals submitted to FDA, the products are characterized using a small number of cell surface markers and simple measures of cell product activity. The regulatory science question is whether or not the characteristics that are measured in product testing are predictive of clinical outcomes. This presentation will describe FDA’s multipotent stromal cell (MSC) Consortium and our research efforts to develop strategies that will result in cell characterization methods that can predict quality, potency, and safety of MSCs. This could have implications for other types of stem cells and cell-based products in general.

About the Presenter

Steven R. Bauer, Ph.D., is the Chief of the Cellular and Tissue Therapy Branch (CTTB), in FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, where he supervises scientific staff engaged in review of cell-based biological therapies, policy development in emerging areas of cellular therapies, and research relevant to their use in clinical trials. Dr. Bauer’s current research focuses on multipotent stromal cell biology and stromal cell-hematopoietic cell interactions that influence development of lymphocytes. Dr. Bauer earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland in 1986. From 1986 through 1991, Dr. Bauer was a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland. In 1991, Dr. Bauer joined FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in its Division of Cellular and Gene Therapies.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration