Posts Tagged stem cells

Dr David Loh at Society of Aesthetic Medicine press conference

Injecting stem cells under the skin to make a person look younger, or using platelet-rich plasma to treat acne scars – could such procedures soon become accepted aesthetic treatments?

These experimental therapies are some of the clinical trials a new independent review board is looking into. David Loh, honorary secretary and spokesman of the Society of Aesthetic Medicine, announced the new independent review board yesterday – CREATEIRB. It stands for Create Independent Review Board and its members will comprise doctors who are GCP (Good Clinical Practice) certified and who have taken the Institutional Review Board (IRB) exams.

It targets the independent private practitioner, who now either goes to a hospital’s review board or direct to a relevant authority, such the Ministry of Health or Health Sciences Authority, for regulatory approval to conduct a clinical trial. David Loh said the board will help “sieve out the less suitable” trials and “at every stage of the clinical trial, there’s an independent oversight, there’s reassurance, there are multi-layers of safeguards and scrutiny. We want to be at the forefront (of the aesthetics field), but also want to be safe,” he added.

These stem-cells have numerous potential cosmetic applications, but because these treatments are necessarily experimental at this stage, CREATEIRB will provide the necessary safeguards to guide the clinical trials to a stage where they can be subjected to peer scrutiny.