Continued improvement in the nation's health depends upon the development of affordable and effective medicines and new therapeutic treatments. The last 20 years has seen the growth of a global healthcare industry based on human proteins produced in transformed mammalian cell lines, with a current market value of £30 billion/year. There is now an opportunity to replicate this growth in new industries using human stem cells in pharmaceutical and regenerative medicine applications. This meeting will focus on exploring the biological and engineering challenges lie ahead before cell based therapies can become an everyday reality.