Sabrina Cohen at the World Stem Cell Summit with Chris Makos, who is an advisor to the Sabrina Cohen Foundation

Last night the World Stem Cell Summit honored Sabrina Cohen with its Inspiration award for her remarkable work in raising awareness about stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine. Sabrina suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a car accident when she was 14. She founded the Sabrina Cohen Foundation for Stem Cell Research to help educate others and raise money for research.

We asked Sabrina what she thinks the most important elements of the conference are.

“It does such a great job of bringing the community together, uniting the patient advocates and the scientists and gathering them all in the same place. That helps us all stay in touch, helps create relationships between all the different groups and collaborations that are necessary to help advance the science.”

“I think the most important benefit of this summit is how it can help to inspire us all. Bernie Siegel [the organizer of the event] has done an amazing job in bringing the patient advocates into the same room as the scientists and making everyone appreciate that we are all in this together. For the scientists it helps put a human face on what they are trying to do. And once you have met the advocates, heard their stories and looked them in the eye, you can’t feel the same way about your work ever again. It really does help inspire all of us.”

 K.M.