Stem Cell Clinical Trials | National Stem Cell Foundation

Promising Research Promising research and progress underscores the need to increase funding for adult stem cell research. Here youll find the best of the best in current adult stem cell research. This section will keep you up to date on ongoing research and new findings.

If youre interested in participating in a clinical trial, please visit ClinicalTrials.gov and perform a search using the terms relevant to your situation. Additionally, you can check the List of Treatable Conditions link, scroll to the bottom of the section and click any links we have found to be helpful regarding this condition/disease. In some cases a link may already be available to perform an automatic search on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Unfortunately, at this time the National Stem Cell Foundation is only able to fund research. NSCF is unable to fund patient participation in a clinical trial on an individual basis.

A word about clinical trials:

Medical research studies involving people are called clinical trials. Clinical trials look at

Trials aim to find out if a new experimental drug or procedure

New treatments have to be thoroughly tested. A new drug, for example is investigated first in the laboratory. If it looks promising, it is carefully studied in people.

There are three different types of clinical trials. These are called phase 1, 2 and 3. Phase 1 is the earliest trials in the life of a new drug or treatment. They are usually small trials, recruiting anything up to 30 patients (often a lot less).

About 70 out of every 100 new treatments tested at phase 1 make it to phase 2 trials. Phase 2 trials are often larger than phase 1. There may be up to 50 people taking part. If the results of phase 2 trials show that a new treatment may be as good as existing treatment, or better, it then moves to phase 3.

Phase 3 trials compare new treatments with the best currently available treatment (the standard treatment). Phase 3 trials are usually much larger than phase 1 or 2. This is because differences in success rates may be small. So, you would need very many results to show the difference. Sometimes phase 3 trials involve thousands of patients in many different hospitals and even different countries. Phase 3 trials are usually randomized. This means the researchers put the people taking part into 2 groups at random. One group gets the new treatment and the other the standard treatment.

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Stem Cell Clinical Trials | National Stem Cell Foundation