Advances in stem cell therapy.

Since the beginning of stem cell biology, considerable effort has been focused in the translation of scientific insights into new therapies. Cell-based assays represent a new strategy for organ and tissue repair in several pathologies. Moreover, alternative treatment strategies are urgently needed due to donor organ shortage that costs many lives every year and results in lifelong immunosuppression. At the moment, only the use of hematopoietic stem cells is considered as the standard for the treatment of malignant and genetic bone marrow disorders, being all other stem cell applications highly experimental. The present chapter tries to summarize some ongoing approaches of stem cell regenerative medicine and also introduces recent findings from published studies and trials conducted in various tissues such as skeletal muscle, liver and lung.