The International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy or ISCT is a great organization in our field.
They have launched a new guide to help healthcare providers navigate this complex area. Click on the image below to check it out.
This new resource is important because healthcare providers, researchers, and the public need authoritative information. Facts and advice they can trust.
What is The International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy or ISCT?
Many of you probably know ISCT, but for those who don’t, it describes itself as “a global society that brings together clinicians, regulators, researchers, technologists, and industry partners.” It “aims to translate cell and gene therapy into safe and effective treatments to improve patients’ lives worldwide.”
The Society is also active in educating the public and countering the proliferation of unproven cell and gene therapies. For instance, their ethics committee has taken important steps in this space.
Chaired by the wonderful Bruce Levine, the committee has many members whose names readers of The Niche are also likely to recognize as important leaders.
The new ISCT guide
The new guide is a unique, useful resource. It helps people navigate a stem cell ecosystem full of misinformation.
Here is more about what spurred this effort:
“ISCT wholeheartedly supports the ethical development of cell- and gene-based products with patient safety and benefit in mind and further wants to drive forward improvements in practice.
However, some individuals and companies are providing unproven and unapproved products directly to the public, many of whom are in vulnerable situations as they search for a cure or answers in response to receiving a devastating diagnosis.
ISCT has major concerns about these unethical practices and seeks to ensure that the public is protected.”
Both care providers and laypeople will find the guide useful. Some researchers may turn to it as well.
Specific elements of the guidelines struck me as particularly useful. For example, the part on characteristics of unproven therapies is a great resource.
Other resources
I wish there were more resources like this new ISCT material. Here are some useful sites and pages on unproven offerings in this space. I will add more.
- Check out my list of FDA approved cell and gene therapies.
- The ISSCR Guide to Stem Cell Treatments.
- EuroGCT is a great resource as well and has more information specifically about the state of things in Europe.
- From the FDA: Important Patient and Consumer Information About Regenerative Medicine Therapies.
- From the FTC: Stemming unproven stem cell therapy claims.
- Stem Cells Australia
- German Stem Cell Network: Unproven Stem Cell Therapies
Thanks. Informing the public is critically important.
However, I noticed that none on the members of the ISCT Committee on Ethics actually represent the patient perspective. Rather, they’re almost all academics. Why exclude from your ethics committee people from the population you purport to be protecting? Does ISCT not care what patients think?
And with regard to its stated goal of promoting “equitable access” to SCT, it’s not doing a very good job. The wealthy can afford it and poor people can’t.