Regenerative medicine: learning from past examples

Regenerative medicine products have characteristically shown great therapeutic potential, but limited market success. Learning from the past attempts at capturing value is critical for new and emerging regenerative medicine therapies to define and evolve their business models as new therapies emerge and others mature. We propose a framework that analyzes technological developments along with alternative business models and illustrates how to use both strategically to map value capture by companies in regenerative medicine. We analyze how to balance flexibility of the supply chain and clarity in the regulatory pathway for each business model and propose the possible pathways of evolution between business models. We also drive analogies between cell-based therapies and other healthcare products such as biologicals and medical devices and suggest how to strategically evolve from these areas into the cell therapy space.