Commercializing the stem cell sciences

Promising new developments in biomedical technology, like stem cell science, are widely endorsed by governments keen to reduce spiraling healthcare costs, clinicians focused on patient care and patients demanding revolutionary new treatments. The intersections between governments, healthcare settings and community demand are the environment in which companies are operating to secure a profit in a global marketplace. Key issues for commercialization in particular include: raising money to conduct research, dealing with regulatory frameworks, developing an intellectual property portfolio, testing technologies in animals and patients, and securing market share.The author's aim is to track the development of the commercial prospects for the stem cell sciences and look at the ways that stem cell technologies have entered or are entering the marketplace as a way to identify any possible barriers that may come up and to provide a resource tor individuals interested in the stem cell markets, to identify new opportunity for entry into the market and to examine the success or failure of other stem cell based technologies already available. This book is the first of its kind to move beyond concerns about ethics and regulations to examine how products are actually being developed for the market.  Chapters offer a comparative analysis of the commercial models adopted in the global stem cell industries, focusing on case studies of publicly available information about different companies around the world working on adapting stem cell technologies to market. The case studies highlight the different possible pipelines for developing stem cell technologies and the issues faced by companies in the competitive global market.