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Over recent years stem cells have stood out as a promising tool for regenerative medicine, providing alternative therapeutic solutions for a large number of diseases. Many clinical trials using stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells are focused on the repair and regeneration of various tissues and organs in degenerative diseases, whose current treatment only succeeds in slowing down the progression of the disease. Although the preliminary results are interesting, further studies are required in order to evaluate the safety and benefits of stem cell therapy, considering the teratoma development and ethical considerations in embryonic stem cell cases or reprogramming-induced somatic mutations and epigenetic defects. This review summarizes several current clinical and nonclinical data on the use of embryonic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells in various diseases.

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Training programs focused on professional learning and development are meant to provide teachers with opportunities to develop their professional competencies for teaching in specific domains. These programs represent an important branch of the educational system in Romania. In the study that we have initiated we have tested and validated the hypothesis that identifying professional training needs and offering specific courses in order to develop the professional competencies represents a key condition for teachers’ effectiveness in terms of their professional learning and development. The methods and instruments for educational research that we used in the present study are both qualitative and quantitative, based on questionnaires, individual interviews and focus group interviews. The reason why we opted for the mixed methods is because quantitative research throughout questionnaires does not always allow participants to explain their choices or the meaning of the questions. The quantitative survey was carried out on a non-probabilistic sample (770 teachers) and the focus groups were conducted with groups of 10 randomly selected respondents from the training program. All the teachers participating in our study are from pre-university education and have participated in continuing education programs accredited by the Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences.