STEM CELL THERAPY

The idea of miracle cures and our bodies’ self-healing is fascinating for everyone, whether you’re interested in science or not.   Realistically how many of us know what our body cells are doing right this minute?  Did you know that your red cells, for example, are always on the move?  That they deliver oxygen to every tissue in your body?   And that these red cells take away all your waste?   Without them, we wouldn’t survive.  So, they are pretty important.  But the work they do is hard on them – squeezing through tiny vessels is tough on these little red blood guys, so the poor things only last about four months.

They get replaced with stem cells, which are essential because they are a type of cell that can develop into many other types of cells. Stem cells can also renew themselves by dividing, even after they have been inactive for a long time.

When most other cells divide, the baby cells act and look just like their parents so, skin cells can’t make anything other than skin cells, liver cells replace liver cells, and so on.  But not stem cells.  Stem cells can be many different types of cells – they morph into the new cell shape and function.  Because when a stem cell divides, the new cells either become another stem cell or a specific cell, such as a blood cell, a brain cell, or a muscle cell.

It’s these amazing abilities of stem cells that make them so fascinating to scientists as they’re hoping that they can use stem cells to repair or replace many different kinds of tissues when damaged by injuries or damaged by diseases.

Stem cells are the body’s raw materials which, under the right conditions, can morph into different cells to form more cells called daughter cells, which in turn, become new cells with a specific function.

Why the excitement?

People who could benefit from stem cell therapies include people with Parkinson’s disease, spinal injuries, Type 1 diabetes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, stroke, burns, cancer, and osteoarthritis.

So, if someone’s heart, for example, contains damaged tissue, doctors might be able to stimulate healthy tissue to grow by transplanting laboratory-grown stem cells into the person’s heart. This could give the heart tissue the chance to renew itself.  It is thought that stem cells have the potential to be grown in laboratories, to become new tissue for use in transplants and regenerative medicine.

Jeffrey R. Millman, assistant professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at Washington University School of Medicine claims that “In theory, if we could replace the damaged cells in these individuals with new pancreatic beta cells — whose primary function is to store and release insulin to control blood glucose — patients with type 1 diabetes wouldn’t need insulin shots anymore.”

Scientists are using stem cells in their research to understand how an organism develops in a single cell and how unhealthy cells can be replaced with healthy ones such as in cancer and congenital disabilities, which happen because cells divide abnormally. In stem cell transplants, stem cells replace cells damaged by chemotherapy and disease or help the donor’s immune system to fight some types of cancer and blood-related diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and multiple myeloma.