Scientists don't like to talk about breakthroughs, first of all. It's an incremental process and it's a research continuum that starts at the bench and ends up at the bedside. We need support at every step of the way to move findings through that pipeline and to implement them to change clinical practice.
I think it is clear, and the evidence supports without question, that regenerative medicine will transform the practice of medicine. It's coming. It will find its way into the clinic through many different avenues for many different diseases. But we will move from the current practices to practices where we'll be harnessing the power of stem cells using drugs, using cells, using all the tools at our disposal to repair tissues through regenerative mechanisms.
I think we gave five or six examples today already, and I'm sure we can answer more questions with more specific examples. The Geron trial has just been started. It's the first example of human embryonic stem cells being used in a clinical context. It's the first trial using those anywhere in the world. That started a few weeks ago.
We know of 50 trials in Canada happening in the next three to four years using cell-based approaches, ranging from Duncan Stewart's trial, where early-phase endothelial progenitors are being genetically modified in a transient way, to promote blood vessel growth for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension where blood vessels fall off the lung, alveoli--I'm being overly technical, I apologize--through to treating heart attack patients.
Trials are being planned to chemically expand cord blood stem cells so that one can use one graft per patient or have earlier engraftment. The science is advancing and those trials should be under way very soon, and on and on. Cancer stem cells are also an area where we lead. A Canadian, again, was the one who discovered cancer stem cells, tumour initiating cells, and we're the first in the clinic with drugs that attack them. It's really quite remarkable.