This is the seventh time the World Conference on Regenerative Medicine is being held in Leipzig. The event has evolved into an outstanding platform for international networking and for showcasing joint scientific work in the field of regenerative medicine. This year, around 800 attendees are expected from over 50 nations. More than 400 contributions (presentations and posters) will be featured in total.

The conference will be opened with a talk by Oliver Brüstle (University of Bonn), one of Germany's most renowned stem cell researchers. He will speak about current developments concerning the biomedical application of programmed cells. The conference will focus in part on applying the findings from cell research. In her talk, Katharina Le Blanc from Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) will discuss potential applications of Mesenchymal stem cells (precursor cells of connective tissue) for cell-based therapies. Robert Passier (Leiden University, Netherlands) and Nenad Bursac (Duke University, USA) will discuss the use of stem cells in the development of new medicines for heart disease.

Besides various sessions on stem cell research, tissue engineering and cell therapy, interesting innovations in the field of 3D printing will also be presented. Boris Chichkov from the Laser Zentrum Hannover will focus his talk on technologies ranging from printing techniques used to produce 3D scaffolds from biological material, which may serve as a model for grafts, to printing living cells for tissue generation.

The World Conference on Regenerative Medicine takes place in Leipzig every two years and is organized by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology.