Authors: Chris Mason, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., F.R.C.S., and Elisa Manzotti

This Industry Report, produced by the Editorial Team at Regenerative Medicine, aims to identify the key translational highlights of 2009-10. However, first we need to go back to 2006 and the start of the present commercial era, RegenMed 2.0. The emergence of RegenMed 2.0 from the trough of disillusionment that followed the industry collapse in 2002 marked a step change from research focused companies to a translation-driven sector. RegenMed 1.0 was forced to put its major efforts into scientific discovery, however, by 2006 this had changed; academia was finally delivering the necessary science to free the commercial sector for translational activities. The other major impact was that all the stakeholders (including patient groups, scientists, clinicians, industrialists and government agencies) were at last starting to functionally interact. In 2010, are we still on the right track, are we still working together and are we still on schedule? The answers are Yes, Yes and Yes! However, the overall impact of the events of the last twelve months has been so significant that 2010 cannot be described as “business as usual,” in fact far from it. Each of the major contributory components is briefly discussed in this report; however, we would like to flag some of the more significant highlights and their impact on Regen, the industry responsible for cell-based therapies.