President's letter on unproven cellular therapy

The International Society for CellularTherapy (ISCT; www.celltherapysociety.org), with a strategy adopted more than 5 year ago (Gunter KC et al. Cytotherapy 2010), wishes to continue raising awareness about unproven cellular therapies. All over the world, there is a legitimate effort to introduce cellular therapies into the clinic; however, at the same time a large number of clinics have begun offering cell-based intervention for a variety of diseases with questionable safety or efficacy data or an unclear scientific rationale.This has led to many vulnerable patients subjecting themselves to unproven cellular therapies with no adequate regulatory oversight or reliable information about risks or benefit. For this reason, ISCT feels the need to provide a new source of information: an open document that represents a sharing of knowledge by leaders in the field.