Hyung-Min CHUNGPresident, CHABio&Diostech Co., Ltd.

Cell based therapy technologies have already started to play an important role in practice of medicine. Cell base therapy is bound to become a part of medical practice. Unlike organs, cells are a potentially renewable resource for body repair. Advances in understanding stem cell biology, for instance, in the conditions needed for successful cell culture, and in the biochemical and genetic/molecular signals cells need for self-renewal and differentiation, have made cell based therapy including stem cell therapy a scientific and clinically possibility.
Last decades, various types of stem cells have been identified from embryos, the fetus, placenta, and adult. Recently derivations of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and embryonic stem (hES) cells have been considered the biggest breakthrough of the 21th century. In fact, commercialization and cures for diabetes, heart diseases, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and many other diseases via stem cell research is expected within the next few years.

Stem cells have two important properties that distinguish them from other kinds of cells; they can proliferate, possibly indefinitely, without changing their phenotype, and they can also spontaneously differentiate into one or more new cell types. Stem cell therapy has potential for healing and repairing the tissue of body. Many diseases, such as stroke, parkinson’s diseases, spinal cord injury, heart failure, blindness, and diabetes, are marked by the loss of cells, which could be renewed by cell transplantation. Add to this, cells have applications in drug discovery as models for pre-clinical work biology, which underpins the search for better medicines. Practically, at least more 180 adult stem cell therapies have already entered the bedside in some research groups through the transplantation of bone marrow stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, cord blood stem cells, fetal brain stem cells and fat stem cells. In addition, early of 2009, US FDA approved clinical trial for patients of spinal cord injuries using human embryonic stem cell derived oligodendrocytes. With knowledge gained in the past decade, human ES cell research is more promising than ever. Now many of stem cell researchers refer to human ES cells as “the gold standard” because these are the cells with the great potential for making any cell type in the body. Human ES cell researches have led to the development of other potential sources of self-renewing cells, such as the reprogramming of adult skin cell to make iPS cells. The ability to make iPS cells demonstrates the power of hES cell research to transform science and create new medical opportunities.

CHABio&Diostech is to establish a “Bench to Bedside” structure , which will be efficient for managing all discovery, development, and delivery process in cell based therapy and can possibly achieve the goal of a focused and integrated business model by shortening the periods between the research and clinical trial. In this presentation, I will introduce the current approach the clinical application using fetal, adult and embryonic stem cells in our company.