Establishment of the National Consortium for Regenerative Medicine and National Regenerative Medicine Database in Japan

With its aim to regain the function of organs that are damaged by illness or injury, regenerative medicine has become the global focus of research. To accelerate the development and establishment of sufficient safety measures in regenerative medicine in Japan, the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act and the Act on Safety of Regenerative Medicine were enacted in 2014. Advancements in regenerative medicine are anticipated to draw attention toward the development of a system that consolidates and uses valuable data from studies performed from premarketing to postmarketing stages. Data gathered from premarketing to postmarketing stages of clinical research would promote new development avenues that would lead to the establishment of appropriate evaluation methods for new regenerative medical products by data validation. Against this background, the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine has been working to establish a national consortium for promoting regenerative medicine and constructing a large-scale clinical data registry, called the National Regenerative Medicine Database. This article aims to introduce the current framework of regenerative medicine in Japan, with a particular focus on the activity for establishment of a national consortium for regenerative medicine and the National Regenerative Medicine Database.