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Stem cells head to the clinic: treatments for cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease could soon be here

More than 100 clinical trials put stem cells for regenerative medicine to the test. It’s a turning point for a field beset with ethical and political controversy.
By
  1. Alison Abbott

    1. Alison Abbott is a writer based in Munich, Germany.

Two of the clinical team prepare the needle in the operating room.

A team at Skåne University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, prepares a needle to transplant cells into a person’s brain to treat Parkinson’s. Credit: Åsa Sjöström for Nature

Andrew Cassy had spent his working life in a telecommunications research department until a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in 2010 pushed him into early retirement. Curious about his illness, which he came to think of as an engineering problem, he decided to volunteer for clinical trials.

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Nature 637, 18-20 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-04160-0

References

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