Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

In illustration of cells with stained nuclei

Regenerative medicine

Overview

Illustration of cells and a strand of DNA

Regenerative medicine therapy, including cell therapy, gene therapy, and therapeutic tissue engineering, provides unprecedented potential to treat, modify, reverse, or cure previously intractable diseases, such as cancer and organ failures. This class of therapy has completely changed the paradigm and the trajectory for medical treatment. Broad clinical translation and patient access requires advances in manufacturing technologies and measurements to ensure the safety, quality, and consistency of the therapy and to reduce the cost.

NIST is committed to solving the measurement challenges of this fast-moving sector of the bioeconomy by providing underpinning measurement infrastructure and platform technologies, as well as standards to promote manufacturing innovation, improve supply chain resilience, and support characterization and testing to facilitate regulatory approval.

The NIST Regenerative Medicine program is working closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (FDA/CBER) and the Standards Coordinating Body (SCB) as well as the broader industry to develop global manufacturing and measurement standards underpinned by a robust measurement infrastructure needed to advance product development and translation as directed by Sec. 3036 of the 21st Century Cures Act.

The NIST laboratory programs support this growing industry as well as the broader industry ecosystem by:

  • Developing new methods for quantitative measurement of quality attributes of a broad range of starting materials, products, and critically needed reagents for applications such as cellular immunotherapies as living drugs,  viral and non-viral vectors and delivery vehicles, and advanced genome editing tools and genome edited biological systems.
  • Providing reference materials, including complex living reference materials, and documentary standards through international and national standards development organizations as well as professional societies.
  • Applying measurement assurance strategies and associated tools to improve the performance of complex biological measurements systems.
  • Convening stakeholders on precompetitive measurement and manufacturing challenges.
  • Establishing partnership across the  public and private sectors to develop measurement solutions, platform technologies, and standards.

Selected Programs and Accomplishments

NIST has developed a suite of standards and tools for characterizing biological systems and components using advanced measurement science strategies that enable the generation of high-quality data.  Some recent examples of NIST’s work include:

  • Design of Fit-For-Purpose Assays: As regenerative medicine therapy represents a broad and diverse range of products using living cells as the starting material and/or the product, NIST led the development of an ISO standard that provides considerations for characterization of cellular therapeutic products, including approaches to select and design analytical methods that are fit-for-purpose. These considerations are intended to guide the establishment of critical quality attributes for a cellular therapeutic product. NIST is developing similar concepts for the measurement of nucleic acids, viral vectors, and other biological systems and entities.
  • Cell Counting Measurements: Count is the most foundational metric for assessing the attributes of cells, yet one of the least harmonized measurements. NIST developed innovative measurement solutions for evaluating the quality of cell counting measurements through experimental design and statistical analysis that led to two ISO international standards as well as tools to facilitate their adoption. The standards are used by industry for cell count and characterization to support CTP testing for safety and efficacy.
  • NIST Flow Cytometry Standards Consortium: Flow cytometry is used to analyze individual cells to understand the proteins, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules they have or produce, and to analyze groups of cells to differentiate among different cell types and lineages. Flow cytometry is the most common analytical tool used in the characterization and testing of curative cellular immunotherapy products.  Established in 2020, the NIST Flow Cytometry Consortium is working with leaders in cell therapy development and manufacturing, U.S. government, global regulators, scientific societies, and the broader biotech industry to develop measurements, standards, and technology needed to accelerate the translation, manufacturing, and approval of new therapies (e.g., CAR-T and emerging stem cell derived allogenic therapy).  The Consortium coordinates strategic inter-laboratory testing and comparisons to develop critical standardized flow cytometry assays for the regenerative medicine and biotechnology industry.
  • NIST Rapid Microbial Testing Methods (RMTM) Consortium: Established in 2020, this Consortium is working with experts across the regenerative medicine field to address the need for measurements and standards, including reference materials, to increase confidence in the use of rapid testing for microbial contaminants in regenerative medicine and advanced therapy products.
  • NIST Genome Editing Consortium: Established in 2018, this Consortium supports the development of groundbreaking tools and standards required to detect and monitor the accuracy and precision of genome editing technologies for the U.S. and global biotechnology sectors. The Consortium has developed a standard genome editing lexicon, with 42 defined terms, that is being referenced by industry in active regulatory filings.
  • VCN Interlaboratory Testing Program: The copy number of integrated genomic DNA is critical for assessing the safety and efficacy of engineered cellular therapeutic products such as CAR-T.  NIST is leading an interlaboratory testing program to evaluate the suitability and utility of cell lines with discrete number of integrated lentiviral vector copy number (VCN) and associated DNA materials to serve as reference materials or controls for a variety of cellular and genomic measurements.
  • Quantitative and Advanced Bioimaging: NIST developed a comprehensive bioimaging program to support the use of imaging to better understand the fundamental mechanism-of-action of therapeutic cells and visualize dynamic and heterogeneous biological processes and interactions­­. Examples include the application of quantitative imaging and AI to assess the quality of tissue engineered medical products in a GMP setting as well as reference materials for instrument qualification and, data sets to benchmark AI/ML algorithm development.  NIST developed tools and guidelines for performing quantitative fluorescence imaging, supporting a critical measurement platform for the characterization of biological processes.
  • Prototype Cell Assay Measurement Platform (P-CAMP): The NIST P-CAMP is a unique automated platform that enables multimodal analysis of large parameter spaces and guides the development of measurement assurance strategies for assays used for characterization and testing of biological products and processes.
  • Assay for Monitoring Patient Response to Therapy: NIST is collaborating with NIH/NCI to develop quantitative and comparable flow cytometric procedures for establishing clinical cut-off points needed to monitor patient response to a broad range of therapies including cellular immunotherapies.

News and Updates

Stem Cells and AI: Better Together

One day in the future when you need medical care, someone will examine you, diagnose the problem, remove some of your body’s healthy cells, and then use them to

Events

Projects and Programs

Orthogonal Measurements

Ongoing
Reliable measurements of quality attributes of medical products are required for quality control and verification of safety and efficacy. To reduce (i) the risk

Tissue Engineering Measurands

Ongoing
Cell viability is often measured as a quality metric of tissue engineered medical products. However, there are a number of inherent assumptions about cell

NIST Genome Editing Consortium

Ongoing
The National Institute of Standards and Technology Genome Editing Consortium addresses the measurements and standards needed to increase confidence and lower

Publications

Report from the 2022 NIST Rapid Microbial Testing Methods (RMTM) Workshop

Author(s)
Stephanie Servetas, Nancy Lin, Nadratun Chowdhury, Scott Jackson, Jason Kralj, Sheng Lin-Gibson, Melody Sanders, Tara Eskandari
Safety and quality of advanced therapies, including cellular, gene, and tissue-engineered medical products, is paramount for success of these products

Measuring Dimensionality of Cell-Scaffold Contacts of Primary Human Bone Marrow Stromal Cells Cultured on Electrospun Fiber Scaffolds

Author(s)
Carl Simon Jr., Peter Bajcsy, Joe Chalfoun, Michael Paul Majurski, Mary C. Brady, Mylene Simon, Nathan Hotaling, Nick Schaub, Allison Horenberg, Piotr Szczypinski, Dongbo Wang, Veronica DeFelice, Soweon Yoon, Stephanie Florczyk
The properties and structure of the cellular microenvironment can influence cell behavior. Sites of cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix (ECM) initiate