MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine

该提案代表了对爱丁堡再生医学中心的更新请求。我们的中心解决了现代医学中的一个主要问题-缺乏任何促进临床修复的疗法。目前，去看医生会导致药物限制损害恶化，但没有修复已经造成的损害。再生疗法的缺乏是一个巨大的社会和医学问题——例如，在多发性硬化症中，它导致了每年100亿欧元的疾病成本中的大部分。为了开发这种新型药物，我们需要研究干细胞，这种存在于我们许多组织中的不死细胞可以产生修复所需的所有细胞。然而，尽管我们在实验室培养皿中对它们的特性有了惊人的了解，但我们仍然对是什么控制了它们在组织中的行为知之甚少，尤其是在被疾病或疤痕损伤的组织中。正是这个问题代表了本中心寻求新治疗方法的起点。为了解决这个问题，我们汇集了能够解决我们需要考虑的所有具体问题的科学家——干细胞对损伤是如何反应的，它们在组织中的增殖是如何调节的，我们能否通过药物或移植新细胞来增加这种增殖，即使我们这样做了，这些新细胞会被纳入并修复受损的组织吗？我们还需要让这些科学家与技术专家和医生合作，他们能够将我们的发现开发成产品，然后在特殊诊所进行试验，在那里，少数经过精心挑选的患者接受这些实验性治疗，看看它们是否有效。在此过程中，我们还有另外两个非常重要的目标。首先，我们需要培养该领域的下一代临床和非临床科学家，以确保所做的投资是可持续的。我们每年都会为我们的博士项目挑选最优秀的人才，并为他们提供干细胞和再生医学各个领域的最先进的培训，然后帮助他们开始自己的独立职业生涯。其次，我们需要告诉公众和政治家我们在做什么，为什么它很重要。为此，我们有一个推广项目（欧洲最好的），通过媒体、网络和面对面的交流，提供有关干细胞各个方面的准确信息——这是确保对干细胞的误解不被允许破坏这个最令人兴奋的科学领域的承诺的重要作用。

This proposal represents a request for the renewal of the Edinburgh Centre for Regenerative Medicine. Our Centre tackles a major problem in modern medicine - the lack of any therapies that promote repair in the clinic. At present, a trip to the doctor will lead to a drug to limit the damage from getting worse, but nothing to repair the damage already done. This lack of regenerative therapies is a huge societal and medical problem - for example in Multiple Sclerosis it causes the majority of the 10 billion Euro annual cost of the disease. To develop this new class of drugs we need to study stem cells, the immortal cells present in many of our tissues that can generate all the cells required for repair. Despite spectacular advances in our understanding of their properties when growing in dishes in the lab, however, we still know very little about what controls their behaviour in tissues, and particularly in tissues damaged by disease or scarring. It is this problem that represents the starting point of our Centre's quest for new treatments.To tackle this problem we bring together scientists who can address all of the specific questions we need to consider - how do stem cells react to damage, how is their proliferation regulated in tissues, can we increase this proliferation by drugs or by transplanting in new cells and, even if we do, will these new cells be incorporated into and repair the damaged tissue? We also need to partner these scientists with technologists and doctors able to develop our discoveries into products and then try them out in special clinics where very small numbers of highly-selected patients are given these experimental treatments to see if they work. In working on this, we have two other very important goals. First, we need to train the next generation of clinical and non-clinical scientists in this field so as to ensure that the investment made is sustainable. We select the brightest and the best each year for our PhD programme and provide them with a state-of-the-art training in all areas of stem cells and regenerative medicine, and then help them start their own independent careers. Second, we need to tell the public and politicians what it is we do and why it is important. For this, we have a an Outreach programme (the best in Europe) that provides accurate information on all aspects of stem cells via the press, the web and in person - a vital role to ensure that misconceptions about stem cells are not allowed to spoil the promise of this most exciting area of science.