Team:SYSU-CHINA/Project/CyclebowTarget

Trounson, A. and C. McDonald, Stem Cell Therapies in Clinical Trials: Progress and Challenges. Cell Stem Cell, 2015. 17(1): p. 11-22.

Dimmeler, S., et al., Translational strategies and challenges in regenerative medicine. Nat Med, 2014. 20(8): p. 814-821.

Cyclebow target

Motivations

     Stem cell therapy is a fast moving field that includes treatments for inherited deficiency, immune disorders and tissue regeneration. In such treatments, various types of stem cells like mesenchymal stem cells(MSCs), hematopoietic stem cells(HSCs), embryonic stem cells(ESCs) and induced pluriopotential stem cells(iPSCs) are modified or trained specifically in vitro and implanted into patients to cure diseases.

     To date, stem cell products are beginning to apply to regenerative medicine on both basic research and clinical trials.

     However, reports of safety and efficacy issues arising from transplantation point out that the field has delivered little compelling evidence for therapeutic efficacy. Despite the good news reported, many trials show acute adverse effects with minor benefits. In many trials, cells implanted show transient presence for a few days with trophic influences or inflammatory responses, not homing or colonizing to their niche[8].

     It is difficult to understand the underlying mechanism of efficacy of these treatments given the transient nature and lineage differentiation properties of stem cells. Preclinical studies should be developed to show sufficient scientific evidence[9].

Target

     For stem cell therapy, an important indicator that reveals the efficacy of treatments is whether the stem cells are still intact and active. Such indicator can be partly revealed by the number of cell cycles that implanted stem cells have experienced before they arrive at the niche.

     Thus, we designed a plug-in system that could evaluate the efficacy of stem cell therapy regarding regenerative medicine and help shedding light into demonstrating the mechanism. Our system is named Cyclebow.