Skokie, IL – The ISSCR and 100 scientific and medical organizations united to impress upon the U.S. Administration to remove the restrictions on research using fetal tissue in order to allow crucial research into COVID-19 treatments and other diseases to move forward during this unprecedented global public health crisis.

The ISSCR announces its endorsement for the California initiative to invest $5.5 billion in stem cell research to continue the research and development of new therapies for life-threatening and devastating diseases. The new initiative will build on the historic $3 billion investment made by California in 2004, which created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and established the state as a leader in the field. While stem cell research holds enormous potential, more research is needed to develop and test safe and effective stem cell-based treatments…

The ISSCR urges NIH to improve the ClinicalTrials.gov to prevent the database from being abused by clinics marketing unproven stem cell interventions. The comments are in response to a request for information from the National Library of Medicine (ClinicalTrials.gov Modernization, Notice Number: NOT-LM-20-003).

The ISSCR writes to urge the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to increase enforcement activities to prevent the marketing and commercialization of stem cell-related products that are unproven and do not conform to United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) regulations.