Dr. Daniel Weiss
Professor, Medicine – Pulmonary

Perspectives on One-Health Regenerative Medicine
Sunday, September 8, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Stem Cell Medical Tourism: Unauthorized use of unproven and potentially stem cell-based therapies is a growing problem globally for human clinical medicine. While there has been increased actions taken by the US FDA and other regulatory agencies, much remains to be done. This is paralleled by increased use of unauthorized and unproven cell-based therapies in veterinary clinical medicine. Stem cell medical tourism will be explored and opportunities for increased regulatory oversight in veterinary clinical medicine discussed.
Current Advances in Lung Regenerative Medicine
Tuesday, September 10, 9:00 AM – 9:30 AM
There has been a rapid explosion in regenerative medicine approaches for lung diseases and critical illnesses. Pre-clinical studies increasingly demonstrate that exogenously administered cells, predominantly mesenchymal stem (stromal) cells (MSCs), can have significant beneficial effects on inflammatory and immune responses affecting repair and remodeling after lung injury. This has led to a steadily growing number of clinical trials of cell therapy approaches for a range of pulmonary diseases and critical illnesses including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), bronchopulmonary dysplasia, COPD, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, and sepsis/septic shock. In parallel, there has been a surge in studies investigating the use of artificial and biologic matrices as a framework for ex vivo lung and airway bioengineering. These studies have been further paralleled by significant increases in understanding the molecular and cellular events by which stem and/or progenitor cells resident in the lung participate in both lung development and in repair and remodeling after lung injury and by which ESCs and iPS cells can be induced to acquire functional airway and alveolar epithelial phenotypes. This is clearly an exciting time for this rapidly moving field.