Where stem-cell research is growing — and where it stalled
2,579 registered studies across 42 conditions, counted by the year each was first posted to ClinicalTrials.gov. Registry counts are usually published as a single current number; this tracks the direction of travel, which is what tells you whether a field is still moving.
What the registry shows
Comparing the last five complete years with the five before them, 10 of 42 conditions registered materially more new studies and 17 registered materially fewer.
Accelerating: Parkinson's Disease (14→40), Muscular Dystrophy (2→10), Multiple Sclerosis (19→26), Crohn's & IBD (25→31).
Slowing: Knee Osteoarthritis (72→50), Cerebral Palsy (20→2), Primary Immunodeficiency (24→10), Spinal Cord Injury (22→11).
Neither direction is a verdict on whether a therapy works. A rise can reflect funding cycles or registration practice as much as scientific promise; a fall can follow a field consolidating around fewer, larger trials. Registration is an activity signal, not an efficacy signal.
Method
- Source: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, one query per condition with intervention "stem cells", retrieved 2026-08-05.
- Counting: each study falls in the year of its first-posted date. Studies are not deduplicated across conditions, so a trial listed under two conditions appears in both rows.
- Not measured: enrolment, completion, results, publication or outcome. A registration is a filing, not a finding.
- Query fidelity: the registry's condition matching is fuzzy; each condition page links the exact stored query so any count here can be reproduced.
By condition
Click any column header to sort.