Interesting discussion topic.
Pity it petered out.
I, too, have been confused why Diabetes has not been prioritised, even over the heart program.
The layman in me feels that diabetes presents a far greater commercial potential, and that the path to that commercial opportunity is a lot easier than recruiting enough patients who are happy to have stems cells injected into the walls of their hearts.
Also it may just be me that is a bit naive, but I would have thought that proving comprehensively that stems cells work for diabetes is a lot cheaper and easier than running complex heart trials.
And it occurs to me that the tests for diabetes would be more definitive, having more binary outcomes (as in, the treatment either works or it doesn't. Yes. Or No) whereas in the heart trials the success seems to be measured in incremental degrees, making the trials a lot more onerous and time-consuming, as we have seen.
Of course, I concede that the reason I don't run a biotech company is because I don't know very much.
But if someone woke me up tomorrow and said, "Happy birthday, Adam. Your birthday present this year is this company stem cell research company called Mesoblast. What do you want to do with it?", the first thing my common sense would make me do is gather around my company's managers and ask them why they are going after the stuff that looks the most complex and challenging (the heart program), instead of what looks to me like the comparatively easier, quicker and less expensive Diabetes route, with potentially the biggest commercial pay-off, anyway.
But, as I say, I've never even work in a biotech business, let alone run one.
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