Overcoming challenges to initiating cell therapy clinical trials in rapidly developing countries: India as a model

Increasingly, a number of rapidly developing countries, including India, China, Brazil, and others, are becoming global hot spots for the development of regenerative medicine applications, including stem cell-based therapies. Identifying and overcoming regulatory and translational research challenges and promoting scientific and ethical clinical trials with cells will help curb the growth of stem cell tourism for unproven therapies. It will also enable academic investigators, local regulators, and national and international biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies to accelerate stem cell-based clinical research that could lead to effective innovative treatments in these regions. Using India as a model system and obtaining input from regulators, clinicians, academics, and industry representatives across the stem cell field in India, we reviewed the role of key agencies and processes involved in this field. We have identified areas that need attention and here provide solutions from other established and functioning models in the world to streamline and unify the regulatory and ethics approval processes for cell-based therapies. We also make recommendations to check the growth and functioning of clinics offering unproven treatments. Addressing these issues will remove considerable hurdles to both local and international investigators, accelerate the pace of research and development, and create a quality environment for reliable products to emerge. By doing so, these countries would have taken one important step to move to the forefront of stem cell-based therapeutics.