Before any drug or therapy can be applied to humans it must be rigorously tested through a process called clinical translation.

Clinical translation involves taking a treatment through several stages to test for safety and efficacy before it can be approved by medical authorities such as the FDA (US Food and Drugs Administration) or EMA (European Medicines Agency) to be applied to humans.  See the following diagram which summarises how the process (in the case of the FDA) works:  

More detailed information about how science becomes medicine can be found at:   

http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/How_Science_Becomes_Medicine.htm

The following informative video further describes the process of developing new drugs and therapies and applying them to humans : www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjSMgVjUHrs

Latest update in January 2011, by Harvey Sihota, member of the Regenerative Research Working Group.  For comments or questions, pls contact research@escif.org