Stem cells are the future of medicine; they hold great promise to cure Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, even some forms of cancer. Someday we may be able to “heal ourselves” with our own body’s stem cells.
But what exactly are stem cells, and how can they be used to cure diseases?
Stem cells are found all over our body in differentiated tissue and organ cells. Stem cells are primarily used in the body to maintain and repair tissue cells, and only divide and repair when needed in case of disease or injury.
With the ability to harvest stem cells from a person’s own body, taking adult stem cells from living blood or organs of healthy adults, the 20-year debate about harvesting them exclusively from fetuses is now moot.
Stem cells can be found in bone marrow, brain cells, skeletal cells, blood vessels, even teeth. Only until recently, scientists have been able to reprogram living stem cells, which provides very promising treatment options for the future. By being able to reprogram adult stem cells the treatment of serious diseases such as cancer, and even curing blindness, are now thought to be within reach. Even pharmaceutical firms and pharmaceutical consultancy firms are even coming out openly saying that the application of stem cells to cure disease is a real possibility and needs to be further examined.
Stem cells could be used to test new drugs, they would allow for a wider range of drug testing for all kinds of drugs, including anti-tumor drugs in cancer cases. They can be used to regenerate damaged cell tissue or even completely replace damaged tissue in the body. It could help in the treatment, or possibly cure such diseases as Alzheimer’s disease, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, strokes, spinal cord injuries, severe burns, and heart disease. Only time will tell what the future use of stem cells will bring to our society as a whole, but at this point many are seeing the possible, future benefit of using stem cells, outweighing any negative stigma regarding stem cell research.
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Stem cells have remarkable potential to be used to test new drugs, cure previously thought of as incurable diseases, and possibly cure many different types of cancer.
From Wikipedia:
The practical definition of a stem cell is the functional definition - a cell that has the potential to regenerate tissue over a lifetime. For example, the gold standard test for a bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) is the ability to transplant one cell and save an individual without HSCs. In this case, a stem cell must be able to produce new blood cells and immune cells over a long term, demonstrating potency. It should also be possible to isolate stem cells from the transplanted individual, which can themselves be transplanted into another individual without HSCs, demonstrating that the stem cell was able to self-renew.
Properties of stem cells can be illustrated in vitro, using methods such as clonogenic assays, where single cells are characterized by their ability to differentiate and self-renew.[6][7] As well, stem cells can be isolated based on a distinctive set of cell surface markers. However, in vitro culture conditions can alter the behavior of cells, making it unclear whether the cells will behave in a similar manner in vivo. Considerable debate exists whether some proposed adult cell populations are truly stem cells.
