Upcoming Perinatal Stem Cell Society Conferences and Changes

Within the next year, the Perinatal Stem Cell Society is organizing three conferences. The purpose of this post is to let the community know when and where these meetings will be held, and to announce some changes at the Society.

When we first formed the International Perinatal Stem Cell Society as a 501(c) non-profit organization in 2013, our primary goal was to advance the translation of perinatal tissue and cell products to the clinic.  We also had a pragmatic goal that we wanted to organize conferences that focused on perinatal cells and tissues as the central topic and focus for the entire meeting. 

To date, the Society has held 5 annual conferences that focused on research and product development in the perinatal space. Our meeting has become a de facto gathering for leaders in this industry to learn from each other and work together to strengthen the field.  Examples of past meeting agendas are visible on our website, under “Conferences”.  We have also published 4 books about this field, including our recently published 2018 edition “Perinatal Stem Cells: Research and Therapy”. 

The first upcoming conference is being held 12 Sept. 2019 in partnership with the Cord Blood Connect meeting.  For this meeting, we have invited the world’s leading cord blood banks to give presentations about the perinatal products that they offer to their clients.

The second upcoming conference is our 6^th annual US-based meeting which will be held 4-6 March 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  This conference will focus on the United States industry of perinatal products marketed under the FDA’s section 361 regulations. This industry has thrived over the past few years and has demonstrated the safety of most products. However, the industry has little oversight and a few bad actors have created negative publicity that adversely impacts everyone. We need to work together to address these issues.   

The third upcoming conference will be held 23-24 May 2020 in Ostrava, Czech Republic. This is our first European conference and it is organized in partnership with the company PrimeCell Bioscience a.s.

In addition to hosting conferences, the Perinatal Stem Cell Society is developing members-only services. A committee of members is in the process of writing a position paper putting forth voluntary minimum standards that we believe all manufacturers of perinatal products and companies should adhere to in order to make the field safer.  We have created a members-only area of our website where this document will be available.  The members-only area already hosts videos of the talks at our 2019 conference, and we have a webinar series planned for late 2019 into early 2020.

For the first time in our existence, the Perinatal Stem Cell Society is asking members to begin paying membership dues.  We need a baseline of financial support to help provide the services organized by the Society. We have a web page with instructions on how to become a member. The Society now has over 500 people signed up as individual members, so we are only asking them to contribute $299 each in membership dues. Individual memberships include a $100 discount for each of our conferences, so the membership pays for itself if the member attends all three of our upcoming meetings.

Please join our society and attend our meetings!