What was the biggest upbeat regenerative medicine story of 2024? I have my own favorites but decided to run a poll. Just putting the poll together, it was evident that this year was unusually full of good and encouraging news.
Diabetes and sickle cell regenerative medicine therapies
In The Niche polling, so far Vertex Type 1 diabetes clinical trial work got the most votes. The rollout of recently approved sickle cell gene therapies including Casgevy came in a close second. I’m leaving the poll open so you can still vote.
Some of the other candidates in the poll are noteworthy.
For example, it was great to see the FDA both become more active on unproven cell therapies and win a key court decision related to stem cell clinics that sell such offerings.
Relatively few people selected the encouraging data from Capricor on muscular dystrophy in the poll, which was interesting. Was I overly upbeat on that?
Readers’ own top stories
I also gave poll respondents the option to list what they think is the top story of the year if they didn’t see it listed in the poll. Those answers were also interesting.
- Eye treatments in Japan regain sight
- Satellos SAT-3247 muscle regeneration
- Anything on kidney failure
- May 2024. OpRegen 24mo results. Durable functional effect in a degen condition
The vision restoration story could have been included in the poll. It is encouraging even if early days.
Regenerative medicine predictions
I’ll post my stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions for 2025 soon. I’ll also be grading my predictions for 2024. I made those predictions just about a year ago.
Should we be hopeful for another generally positive year in 2025? How much will the new administration influence the regenerative arena?
As a side note, I also asked people on Reddit in the stem cell subreddit what the top good news story of 2024 was. Remarkably I think every comment was about stem cell clinics or unproven offerings. Yikes. I recently posted about stem cells on Reddit where I noted it is a Wild West in many ways.