Resumen en español

Regenerative Medicine seeks to develop strategies to restore damaged tissues. The recent boom of this research fi eld and its potential for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases —such as neurodegenerative, hepatic and cardiac, or skin burns and various traumas— demands an ongoing analysis of the most recent investigations, their impact, the associated ethical debates, as well as the research horizon in the coming years. To answer these and other questions we reviewed the most important advances reported throughout the year 2011 and consulted the opinion of a regenerative medicine expert, profesor Felipe Prosper Cardoso from the University of Navarra in Spain. Despite the signifi cant progress in the laboratory regarding the derivation of autologous cells (whether differentiated or pluripotent) and the development of biomaterials that facilitate regeneration, the clinical translation of regenerative medicine therapies is still incipient and constitutes a grand challenge for researchers in this fascinating field