In this editorial, Regenerative Medicine Managing Commissioning Editor Adam Price-Evans reflects on a year in the journal.

Adam Price-Evans¹

¹ Future Science Group, Unitec House, 2 Albert Place, London N31QB, UK. [email protected]

Content Highlights in 2017

Regenerative Medicine ended 2016 with a 10-Year Anniversary Special Focus Issue entitled “Regenerative medicine: past, present and future” [1] which reflected on how the field changed over the previous decade and offered perspectives on the progress being made in the field. Our aim in 2017 was to continue showcasing the latest research and expert commentary from leaders in the field.

At the time of writing, the most read article of 2017 in Regenerative Medicine is a Special Report entitled “Regenerative capacity of autologous stem cell transplantation in elderly: a report of biomedical outcomes” [2]. In this article, the authors analyze whether self-renewal potential, expression of stemness genes and in vitro differentiation capability in stem cells collected from elderly patients validate their application in clinical trials.

The second most read article of 2017, and most read Editorial, was “Mesenchymal stem cells in regenerative medicine: a new paradigm for degenerative bone diseases” [3]. In this short article, the authors discuss the translational potential of mesenchymal stem cells for bone and cartilage disease and offer their perspectives on what issues must be overcome in order to realize the potential of mesenchymal stem cells.

The most highly read Research Article published in volume 12 was “Fake news portrayals of stem cells and stem cell research” [4]. Through insight gained from content analysis, the authors reveal several observations relating to misinformation and promotion of mistrust, and offer a ‘call to action’ for the research community and governments to work to curtail the influence of these websites.

Following the theme of online sources of information on stem cell research, another highly popular article from this volume and our top-scoring paper on the Altmetric platform in 2017 was the Perspective from Leigh Turner entitled, “ClinicalTrials.gov, stem cells and ‘pay-to-participate’ clinical studies” [5]. This article discusses how U.S. clinics and international businesses that engage in direct-to-consumer advertising of purported stem cell treatments are successfully registering for-profit, pay-to-participate “studies” on the NIH registry and database, ClinicalTrials.gov. This article received attention from numerous news outlets and blog authors from around the world.

Special Focus Issue

The aim of Special Focus Issues published in Regenerative Medicine is to highlight key themes and “hot-topics” in the field. A two-part Special Focus Issue entitled “Regenerative Medicine in Society: Interdisciplinary Perspectives” was published in the September [6] and October [7] 2017 issues of the journal. This expansive collection offers perspectives on key social, ethical, policy and regulatory issues across many areas of the rapidly evolving field of regenerative medicine.

The Special Focus Issue was guest edited by Achim Rosemann (University of Warwick, UK), Jan Barfoot and Clare Blackburn (both MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK). The European Commission-funded EuroStemCell project, which aims to educate the public on stem cells and their impact on society, collaborated with Regenerative Medicine toward the publication of these issues and, in fact, a number of the aforementioned popular articles from 2017 were published in these two issues [4, 5].

Conclusion

We appreciate all feedback from the regenerative medicine community regarding the direction of our content, especially suggestions of any priority topics in the field that you feel the journal should cover. We welcome unsolicited research, review and opinion article proposals, amongst others, and would be delighted to hear from you if you are interested in submitting to the journal.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our readers, contributing authors, valued Editorial Board members and peer reviewers for their continued support and collaboration as we continue to publish the latest cutting-edge research. We very much look forward to working with you all over the next year and hope to see Regenerative Medicine continue to grow and serve the research community in 2018.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Adam Price-Evans is an employee of Future Science Ltd, publisher of Regenerative Medicine. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

References

[1] Future Medicine. Regenerative Medicine. Special Focus Issue: Regenerative medicine: past, present and future (2016). https://www.futuremedicine.com/toc/rme/11/8

[2] Gonzalez-Garza MT, Cruz-Vega DE. Regenerative capacity of autologous stem cell transplantation in elderly: a report of biomedical outcomes. Regen. Med. 12(2), 169-178 (2017).

[3] Shyam H, Singh SK, Kant R, Saxena SK. Mesenchymal stem cells in regenerative medicine: a new paradigm for degenerative bone diseases. Regen. Med. 12(2), 111-114 (2017).

[4] Marcon AR, Murdoch B, Caulfield T. Fake news portrayals of stem cells and stem cell research. Regen. Med. 12(7), 765—775 (2017).

[5] Turner L. ClinicalTrials.gov, stem cells and ‘pay-to-participate’ clinical studies. Regen. Med. 27(6), 705-719 (2017).

[6] Future Medicine. Regenerative Medicine. Special focus issue on regenerative medicine in society: interdisciplinary perspectives (part I) (2017). https://www.futuremedicine.com/toc/rme/12/6

[7] Future Medicine. Regenerative Medicine. Special focus issue on regenerative medicine in society: interdisciplinary perspectives (part II) (2017). https://www.futuremedicine.com/toc/rme/12/7

[8] Rosemann A, Barfoot J, Blackburn C. Special focus issue on regenerative medicine in society: interdisciplinary perspectives (part I) – Foreword. Regen Med. 12(6), 577—580 (2017).

[9] Barfoot J, Rosemann A, Blackburn C. Special focus issue on regenerative medicine in society: interdisciplinary perspectives (part II) – Foreword. Regen Med. 12(7), 733-736 (2017).