Please tell us about your clinical experience. How many patients that require stem cell treatments do you see on a yearly basis? What have been the most exciting aspects of stem cell therapy in recent years?

How likely is Healios to achieve success with its human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cell transplantation for treatment of Age-related macular degeneration ?

Aspen Neuroscience provides genomic-based patient-specific pluripotent stem cell therapy, like dopaminergic neurons for Parkinson's disease. How important is maintaining the genetic-based quality control to avoid the mutation of cells used for therapy? What’s your impression about the science of iPS in treating neurological disorders?What’s the probability of success here?

Can you discuss the approach Pluristem has taken, with placental expanded (PLX) cells, secreting therapeutic chemokines, cytokines and growth factors in response to signals produced by inflammatory and ischemic conditions within the body. How important is the fact that PLX cells are readily available and require no tissue matching prior to administration? Is that an important advantage the company has?

What are your high-level thoughts on Semma Therapeutics’(now owned by Vertex) discovery that can generate billions of insulin-producing beta cells in the laboratory, developed in islet-like clusters grown from stem cells. What’s your opinion on the preclinical work in animal models of diabetes showing that transplantation of these cells is sufficient in controlling blood glucose levels? What future do you think this technology has?

Pluristem has previously reported increases in the gluteus medius muscle strength, with the group receiving the 150 million cell dose displaying a statistically significant 500% improvement over the placebo group. Patients treated with the 300 million cell dose showed a 300% improvement over the placebo. How encouraging are those results? How well do you think it can translate into further improvements?

How much of an issue is the possibility of tumor formation following transplantation of iPSCs, considering the capacity to generate a wide variety of unwanted tissue types after transplantation, including malignant tumors?

How important do you think this technology can be in studying in vitro culture systems derived from pluripotent or adult stem cells simulating the architecture and functionality of native organs such as the intestine, liver, pancreas, kidney, heart, and brain, what’s the potential for multiple clinical applications including toxicity screening, disease modeling, personalized and regenerative medicine?