Stem cell medicine promises to revolutionize the treatment of human diseases and injuries. It has captured the hopes of the scientific community and the public alike. Perhaps nowhere is the potential of stem cells to treat human disease and injury more promising than for neurologic disorders. For this promise to become a reality, not only must basic research in this rapidly evolving field advance, but these advances must be translated through pre-clinical and clinical development into clinical practice. This bench-to-bedside pathway represents an enormous multidisciplinary effort, and many hurdles, both scientific and technical, must be overcome to bring stem cell therapies safely and effectively to reality. Traveling a path from "bench to bedside" is a relatively new opportunity for researchers and provides novel challenges for training graduate students. The advent of this new frontier also means and need of additional training in the clinical aspects of the disease they are studying to identify therapeutic targeted with the greatest relevance to human disease, inform preclinical safety and efficacy testing, and define preclinical outcome measures that parallel clinical metrics. In addition, the complexities of the regulatory processes required for human clinical trials and the business of taking research products to patients require a working knowledge of "bedside" in translational applications of laboratory research. Finally, there is a need preparation for goals that enhance biomedical research in the context of health and human services as a whole.

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