MSCs: science and trials

Although the field of regenerative medicine is rife with unsubstantiated claims of benefit and is often biased by strong commercial interests, it is important that the legitimate scientific enterprise does not allow this noise to overshadow meaningful advances in the field. By providing a skeletal system–centric view of MSCs, the Perspective by Bianco et al. relegates the rapidly growing body of literature dedicated to exploring nonprogenitor functions of MSCs, including immunomodulation, to obscurity and undermines the efforts of legitimate and dedicated scientists to understand these functions and exploit them to achieve a therapeutic benefit in human patients. Indeed, our committee believes that the existing scientific data are sufficiently mature to warrant MSC-based clinical trials for disease indications beyond the skeletal system. However, we acknowledge that the sound establishment of MSC-based therapies requires controlled, randomized, prospective clinical trials that incorporate mechanistic-based studies to fully assess the pharmaceutical underpinnings of such therapy.