Advancing Discovery, Translation, and Global Collaboration
I am excited to have taken on the role of ISSCR President for this year, building on Hideyuki Okano’s leadership and vision.
Many of you may think of ISSCR mainly as the place we gather for the annual and regional meetings. But it is an organization doing far more. In addition to Keith Alm and his staff, ISSCR has over 150 volunteers who contribute to setting the ethical and scientific standards that guide our field, educating physicians and patients, advocating for our science with policymakers, and nurturing the next generation of researchers.
Among the many ongoing initiatives of ISSCR, I see three areas that are particularly urgent for this coming year.
Clinical Translation
First, there will be a strong and sustained focus on clinical translation. We are at a remarkable moment with the very first conditional approvals of iPSC-based products in Japan, and several pivotal Phase III trials underway across the globe.
In parallel, there is enormous momentum for adopting human stem cell-based disease models in the drug discovery and development pipeline, and many of you have heard of the new effort by ISSCR to support the adoption of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) working hand-in-hand with basic scientists, industry, and the regulatory authorities.
Given these rapid developments in the field, we have to ensure that our partners in pharma and in the tool development space have an increasingly strong voice in our society. Similarly, we have to enhance our efforts to engage both the medical and patient community working together as a team to move stem cell therapies into routine medical practice.
Back to Basics
Second, as someone whose own work has now moved all the way to Phase III trials, I am adamant that we must not let the push toward the clinic starve the basic discovery that made these breakthroughs possible. It was at the 2006 ISSCR meeting – held in Canada, and during the World Cup, just like for ISSCR 2026 – that Shinya first revealed, with his own World Cup analogy, the winning team of Yamanaka factors. So, one question for all of us is what the next huge breakthrough will look like – the one that drives the next 20 years of stem cell research. Will we build revolutionary new tools to program maturation, age, or rejuvenation of cells, or whole organisms, on demand? Can we move from organoids all the way to organs? Will we decipher the molecular logic from model organisms that allows us to regrow limbs or regenerate organs in mammals, including humans?
Such breakthroughs will come from the next generation of scientists, scientists who may be inspired by a recent ISSCR event to take on the daring journey to fundamentally change our field. ISSCR must be the place where they share their boldest ideas, where we help them navigate technical and ethical challenges, and where they find a community that will fight for the value of fundamental, high-risk research.
International Collaboration
This brings me to my third priority. We are all painfully aware of the threats to basic research funding, and we face a growing threat to international collaboration itself – even to the simple act of traveling to meetings and symposia. ISSCR has to stand against that. We must ensure our society has strong and growing representation across the globe. This includes our commitment to rotate the annual meeting every year among North America, Europe, and Asia, and to advance international initiatives for all aspects of stem cell research.
Achieving breakthroughs in basic stem cell research and developing novel stem cell-based therapies is extremely challenging, and we have a much better chance of success working together without any geographical barriers. In Parkinson's disease, a consortium called G-Force PD across groups in Europe, Asia, and North America helped each of its members to reach the clinic faster and to bring new therapies to patients more effectively and safely. ISSCR needs to be a community where the next such consortia can form that will tackle the many other, currently intractable disorders using the power of stem cell biology.
I am fortunate to work with an extraordinary ISSCR staff, led by Keith, and I could not be more excited to partner with all of them over this coming year. But my appeal is to all of you. ISSCR is YOUR society. We are here to serve you, and we genuinely want to hear what is working, what we can do better, and what we should be bold enough to try next - so please reach out to me or to Keith directly.
Next year in San Francisco, we will celebrate 25 years of ISSCR. I can think of no greater privilege than to help carry this society to this milestone and to prepare it for the next 25 to come. I am confident that, working together with all of you, they will be our strongest yet.
Lorenz Studer