Given their unique regenerative abilities, stem cells offer new potential for treating diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Conventional treatments for patients have been based on either surgery or drug therapy, treating conditions and illnesses that result largely from ageing. Stem cell science can help doctors predict and prevent illnesses long before they occur and the North East is rapidly becoming a world leader in the field.
Durham and Newcastle Universities have come together with their related NHS Trusts and a range of other partners, to form the North East England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI). Their work looks at a range of stem cell types and scientists and clinicians are working together on developments that can be used in a real-life medical setting to transform lives.
North East facilities are at the forefront of stem cell science.
Spin-out companies have already been created to develop the technologies and these are attracting industrial partners. These facilities will put the North East at the forefront of stem cell science nationally, and internationally in the areas of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, human genetics, reproductive medicine, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical bioprocessing.
Large elements of the work are built upon the success of Newcastle’s Centre for Life, which has brought together different disciplines of scientists and clinicians with ethicists, social scientists, public educators and commercialisation agents.
Medical science key facts
- In 2005, scientists at the Centre for Life in Newcastle were the first group in the world to successfully clone a human embryo
- Newcastle University’s Institute of Human Genetics has held the highest possible grading (5*) in the national Research Assessment Exercise since 2001
- Newcastle Human Embryonic Stem Cell Group is one of only a few research units to be awarded a Human Fertilisation Authority license to undertake somatic cell nuclear transfer
- The Institute of Human Genetics at the Centre for Life is leading cutting-edge work into the diagnosis and follow-up treatment of bowel cancer
- More than 3,000 babies have been born with help from the NHS’s Newcastle Fertility Centre at the Centre for Life
- The Centre for Life in Newcastle has been awarded a £734K grant from Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of Surgeons to investigate the role of stem cells in the human prostate.
The Science City team can introduce you to key people working in the area of stem cell and regenerative medicine at Newcastle University.
We are also on hand should you be looking to find out more about locating your business in the city.
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