Ten years from now, what therapies will come out of stem cell research? We recently asked Larry Goldstein of UC San Diego to make his prediction. Will his work in Alzheimer’s disease be in clinical trials? What about the diabetes, brain cancer, HIV/AIDS and other CIRM-funded projects that are close to clinical trials? Will those be winners?

Goldstein’s answer showed his age (by which, of course, I mean experience). He harkened back to genetic engineering in the 1970s, which, at the time, elicited much of the same excitement as stem cell research does today.

“If you go back to the 70s we had ideas about what it would produce,” he said. He pointed to human insulin for diabetics, which was among the first successes of that new field.

“But it also delivered far more because when you put new technologies in the hands of creative people with adequate funding to explore and develop that technology to better understand and treat diseases amazing things happen. Unexpected things.”

What does that mean for stem cell research?

“If the public continues to adequately fund research with stem cells we will see breakthroughs that are absolutely unexpected and that will change the way that we deliver medicine.”

Some of the research projects won’t go anywhere. That’s the way science progresses. But “some of them are going to hit it big and change everything.”

You can watch Goldstein’s comments here:

A.A.