Bench to bedside
The pathway from laboratory observation to clinical use, and where it usually breaks.
The path runs from a laboratory observation, through preclinical models, into first-in-human safety testing and then the staged trial phases, before regulatory review and clinical adoption. Described that way it sounds orderly. In practice it is a filter, and most candidates do not pass.
The gaps have names. The first — bench to first-in-human — is where most regenerative candidates fail, often on manufacturing and consistency rather than biology: a living product is harder to standardise than a molecule, as Translation in regenerative medicine describes. The second gap is subtler: therapies that work in trials still may not reach routine practice, for reasons of cost, training, or infrastructure.
Timescales are long — often more than a decade — which is why claims that a laboratory result is "close to the clinic" deserve scepticism. How to read a research paper and Systematic reviews and meta-analysis are the practical tools for placing any single result on this path.
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