What is regenerative medicine? What are the situations and points where translation is necessary?

1. What is Regenerative Medicine?

Regenerative medicine refers to medical technologies that maximize the regenerative capabilities of cells in tissues and organs that have suffered functional impairment. Regenerative medicine holds the potential to bring new medical treatments to diseases and injuries that previously had no treatment options.

1-1. Stem Cells and iPS Cells

Let's talk about stem cells and iPS cells, which are often discussed in the context of regenerative medicine, using cardiac muscle cells as an example.
When cardiac muscle cells form a collective, they create cardiac tissue that generates the heartbeat. However, the truth is that these cardiac muscle cells only undergo cell division during the fetal stage and do not divide after birth.
This has significant implications for treatments such as heart failure.
Therefore, when attempting to regenerate cardiac tissue using the patient's own cells, techniques to proliferate mature cells like cardiac muscle cells using "stem cells" created by artificially culturing fertilized eggs or "iPS cells" made by extracting cells from the skin and introducing genes become essential.

 

1-2. Regenerative medicine that does not use patient cells

In addition, cases where the regeneration of functions impaired by artificial materials, as well as cells, may also be included in regenerative medicine. For example, there are treatment methods that promote regeneration by injecting growth factors that increase periodontal tissue cells into periodontal tissue destroyed by periodontal disease.

1-3. Regenerative medicine development focuses on cell culture and injection

In the development stage of regenerative medicine, it is important to culture the cells created and inject them without damaging the tissue that needs to be regenerated, allowing cell division to occur within the tissue.
However, in the field of technological development for regenerative medicine, obstacles can arise, such as damaging the tissue when injecting mature cells, which can hinder successful regeneration.
Stories about how doctors, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, or manufacturers of precision equipment outside the medical industry collaborate to achieve technological breakthroughs in response to these issues are sometimes featured in the media.
Additionally, there is a wealth of detailed, accurate, and useful medical and technical information on regenerative medicine available on the websites of pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical institutions, as well as in specialized and general books, so those interested may find it beneficial to refer to them.
Below is an example of a medical and technical information site on regenerative medicine.

 

Understanding Bio: What is Regenerative Medicine? (Chugai Pharmaceutical)

Current Status of iPS Cells (KyotoU Channel)

2. Advantages and Disadvantages of Regenerative Medicine

Regenerative medicine feels innovative and highly safe, but there are still advantages and disadvantages. Next, let's take a look at them.

2-1. Benefits of Regenerative Medicine

Regenerative medicine fundamentally uses stem cells and iPS cells to "regenerate the patient's tissue and organ cells," thereby reducing the burden on patients from large-scale surgeries such as organ transplants and avoiding side effects caused by drug administration.

Also, since it is "regeneration of cells in tissues and organs," it aims for fundamental treatment rather than symptomatic therapy.

Therefore, basically, it can be considered something that increases medical benefits and reduces safety risks.

2-2. Disadvantages of Regenerative Medicine

That said, since regenerative medicine itself is a new field of treatment, it inevitably results in increased development and manufacturing costs for manufacturers, and a higher financial burden on patients. Moreover, it takes a considerable amount of time to determine whether the medical benefits justify these costs.

In addition, treatments using stem cells and iPS cells eliminate serious safety issues such as rejection reactions seen in organ transplants; however, since these are new treatment methods, there are always concerns about potential health risks.

Additionally, although regenerative medicine reduces elements that lead to ethical controversies such as brain death, which is debated in organ transplantation, since it involves the use of fertilized eggs, somatic cells, and genome editing, it cannot be said that there are no ethical issues at all.

3. Market Trends in Regenerative Medicine

According to information from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the future market size of peripheral industries such as devices, consumables, and services related to regenerative medicine is expected to reach 1.3 trillion yen domestically and 15 trillion yen globally by 2050, with anticipated growth. The government also plans to support the practical application of regenerative medicine going forward.

In addition, as related businesses in regenerative medicine, there are companies involved in culture operations, media, reagents, culture equipment, and testing instruments.

Future market size forecasts for the regenerative medicine peripheral industry both domestically and internationally, costs and reduction effects related to the manufacturing and processing of regenerative medicine, related businesses in regenerative medicine, review of regulations related to regenerative medicine and implementation of practical promotion projects (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry)

4. The Process of Regenerative Medicine and Situations Requiring Translation

The process of regenerative medicine is not significantly different from other pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and it follows the flow of research and development, productization, and sales.
In that sense, it is necessary to prepare clinical trial-related documents such as clinical trial protocols, clinical trial summary reports, case report forms, informed consent documents, and investigational drug brochures, as well as regulatory submission materials, which creates situations where translation is required.

Similarly, it is necessary to create pharmaceutical package inserts, medical device instruction manuals, catalogs, white papers, and other marketing documents, which also require translation.

In regenerative medicine, since the collection and cultivation of cells are key points, documents related to cell supply, detailed manuals on cell characteristic evaluation, cell separation, cultivation, and processing are required. Additionally, documents concerning media, reagents, cell collection instruments, cultivation equipment, and testing devices are often involved.

5. Key Points and Precautions for Translating Regenerative Medicine

As mentioned above, the fundamental points of translation for regenerative medicine are considered to remain largely unchanged.
In other words, when outsourcing translation, it is necessary to choose a company with experience in medical translations such as pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

Regenerative medicine belongs to the fields of "bio" and "life sciences," and since it deals with advanced technologies, it is wise to choose a translation company that is well-versed in the bio and life sciences fields and capable of handling documents related to cutting-edge technologies.

In the translation of regenerative medicine-related pharmaceuticals and medical devices, where it is desirable to carry out development and launch as quickly as possible, a large volume of documents must be translated rapidly, making the use of machine translation and translation support tools indispensable.

6. Please leave regenerative medicine translation to Human Science as well

Human Science has a track record of providing translation services for manufacturers of culture products, culture media, cell analysis reagents, and bio-experimental instruments, as well as companies offering services in genome analysis, cell analysis (such as flow cytometry), and proteomics, and manufacturers of genome analysis equipment such as next-generation sequencers.

 

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In addition, Human Science boasts excellent translators in the life sciences field, providing reliable translations by translators with a background in life sciences, such as research achievements in companies, and those who have built a solid track record in bio and life sciences translation based on their strong capabilities in the medical field and thorough research skills.

 

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7. Information on Medical Translation Services in Human Science

At Human Science, we offer human translation services and post-editing services. Utilizing translation assistance (CAT) tools such as Trados and Phrase TMS (formerly Memsource), as well as machine translation tools, we are committed to improving translation efficiency and quality, contributing to our clients' further development.
If you have any concerns or interests, please feel free to contact us.

 

Medical Translation Services

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In addition, we provide information related to medical/healthcare translation, such as the following. We hope you find it useful.

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