This was meant to be a general post not a specific reply but I'm not smart enough to figure out how to post.
I was speaking to the regenerative medicine researcher. I was told funding has been approved for a new stem-cell copd trial. This is a small, 15 person, trial. The underlying reason is to ensure donor lung, stem-cells are safe (donor as opposed our own). The point is, we could use our own without much risk of side effects but it isn't cost effective to remove ours and grow the millions needed from those relatively few. It is cost effective to use a pre-existing donor bank containing billions of lung stem-cells (they know how to grow them). If this test proves donor cells are safe, they can proceed to larger test populations, focusing on the efficacy of the therapy on copd. So far, the effects of lung stem-cells while they haven't resulted in side-effects, they haven't been very effective in reversing copd. I understand in the previous tests only 5-10% of subjects reported a significant improvement of symptoms.
Any comments, I'd love to hear them. I want this to work, so badly.