Today, living in 21st century, we still do not have proper treatments for diseases like Diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease etc. Some light of hope for these incurable disease is the Stem Cell Therapy. Research on how an organism develops from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells in adult organisms is advancing. This area of science investigates the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat disease which is often referred to as Regenerative or Reparative Medicine.
First
successful human transplant of insulin-making cells from cadavers was done in
1999. Followed by first cloned human embryos created by Advanced Cell
Technology in 2001 and Harvard Researchers grow stem cells from embryos in
2004.
Stem
cell has the ability to continuously divide and differentiate into various
other kinds of cells or tissues. The stem cells have general properties:
· They
are capable of dividing and renewing themselves for long periods.
· They
are unspecialized.
· They
can give rise to specialized cell types.
Stem
cells are of various types- Totipotent, Pluripotent, Multipotent, Oligopotent,
Unipotent.
Stem
cell therapy is introduction of new adult stem cells into damaged tissue in
order to treat disease or injury. The ability of stem cells to self-renew and
give rise to different cells, that can potentially replace diseased and damaged
areas in the body, with minimal risk of rejection and side effects. Any disease
in which there is tissue generation can be a potential candidate for stem cell
therapies.
Stem cell transplant is proceduralized by the following steps:
o Evaluation and pre transplant testing
o Identification of the appropriate type
of transplantation
o Obtaining stem cells from the patient or
a donor
o Conditioning treatment
o Infusion of healthy stem cells into the
patient
o Engraftment and recovery
o Post-transplant care
o Coordination of continuing care
The
applications of stem cell therapy includes, Tissue repair which involves the
regeneration of spinal cord, heart tissue or any other major tissues in the
body; For Heart disease , in which adult bone marrow stem cells injected into
the heart are believed to improve cardiac function in victims of heart failure
or heart attack; For Leukemia and Cancer, in which when Leukemia patients
treated with stem cells emerge free of disease and also reduce emergence of pancreatic
cancers in some patients; Adult stem cells may be helpful in starting repair of
eroded cartilage for Rheumatoid Arthritis patients; It can also be given for type
1 diabetic patients in which embryonic stem cells might be trained to become
pancreatic islets cells that are needed to secrete insulin. Nowadays, the
therapy is indicated for various other medical conditions. It is a new form of
emergence to the treatment era.
In
conclusion, stem cell therapy has become a very promising and advancing scientific
research topic in recent years. The development of treatment methods has evoked
great expectations. The genesis of stem cells is followed by laboratory steps
of controlled stem cell culturing and derivation. Quality control and teratoma
formation assays are important procedures in assessing the properties of the
stem cells tested. Derivation methods and the utilization of culturing media
are crucial to set proper environmental conditions for controlled
differentiation. The stem cell therapy must overcome the challenges to be
accepted worldwide. A wide variety of possibilities makes this cutting-edge
therapy a turning point in modern medicine, providing hope for untreatable
diseases.
