The cells in a stem cell line continue to grow, but they don't become specialized cells. Ideally, they should remain free of genetic defects and continue to create more stem cells. A stem cell line is a group of cells that all descend from a single original stem cell and are grown in a laboratory. Groups of cells can be removed from a stem cell line and frozen for storage or sharing with other researchers.
If your body were a building, your stem cells would be the foundation. Stem cells are the only cells in the body that can create specialized cells. They can produce more than 200 specialized cells, such as blood and bone cells, from among the trillions of cells in the body. One type of stem cell builds the body. After building your body, another type of stem cell acts as teams of maintenance personnel assigned to specific structures.
Our scientists are working to understand how to grow large quantities of adult stem cells, which have the potential to develop into more than 200 cell types in cell culture. The initial concept of regenerative medicine dates back to 330 BC. C., when Aristotle observed that a lizard could regrow the tip of the tail it had lost. Little by little, human beings have been understanding regenerative medicine and how it can change the way we treat diseases.
Adult (non-embryonic) stem cell therapy, a type of regenerative medicine, has gained rapid momentum relatively recently. Simply put, adult stem cells have the potential to become any of the more than 200 cell types in the body. Adult stem cells have been found in most parts of the body, such as the brain, bone marrow, blood vessels, skin, teeth, and heart. Usually, there are a small number of stem cells in each tissue. Because of their small number and speed of division (growth), it is difficult to grow adult stem cells in large quantities.
Scientists at the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center are working to understand how to grow large quantities of adult stem cells in cell culture. These scientists are also working with more primitive stem cells, isolated from the umbilical cord after normal births. Stem cell transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants, have been performed since the late 1960s and are well-established treatments for blood cancers and bone marrow failure diseases. Umbilical cord blood also contains stem cells that can be used for transplants for these diseases.
Stem cell transplants for other diseases that use bone marrow, umbilical cord cells, or other sources of stem cells are still experimental and should be considered as such. Every day, scientists around the world are researching new ways to harness stem cells to develop effective new treatments for a range of diseases. For a patient with blood cancer, such as leukemia, a bone marrow transplant will replace their unhealthy blood cells with healthy ones. This same concept: inserting healthy cells so that they can multiply and form new tissue or repair diseased tissue can be applied to other forms of stem cell therapy. Stem cell research continues to advance as scientists learn how an organism develops from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells.
For example, the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center collaborates to investigate the potential of a select group of umbilical cord stem cells for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gerhig's disease). Developing a stem cell treatment that has been proven to be safe and effective is not as simple as removing stem cells from one part of the body and placing them in another. In collaboration with appropriate regulatory agencies, the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center is carrying out R&D activities that will allow the Center to conduct human clinical trials on a variety of diseases for years to come. As with the development of a new drug, this process, once completed, will guarantee patients in clinical trials and, ultimately, patients using the approved product, that the product is safe for use in humans and that the stem cells that are administered are effective in treating the injury or disease for which they are used. Embryonic stem cells only exist in the early stages of embryonic development and are capable of producing any type of cell in the body.
Under the right conditions, these cells retain the ability to divide and make copies of themselves same indefinitely. Scientists are beginning to understand how to make these cells become any of the more than 200 different types of cells in the human body. A stem cell transplant replaces stem cells. It is used when stem cells or bone marrow have been damaged or destroyed by a disease, including some types of cancer, or by high doses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy used to treat cancer.
Not all organs have been proven to contain these cells, and adult stem cells generally have limited development potential, as their capacity to proliferate is limited and can only give rise to a few cell types. Adult (non-embryonic) stem cells are unspecialized or undifferentiated cells, meaning they haven't yet developed into a specific cell type. Scientists believe that a thorough understanding of the complex phenomenon of stem cell differentiation will make it possible to find a potential cure for serious medical conditions caused by abnormal cell division and differentiation, such as cancer and various growth and development disorders. This new technique may allow the use of reprogrammed cells instead of embryonic stem cells and prevent the immune system from rejecting new stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are the most versatile, as they can become all cells of the developing fetus.
For example, hematopoietic stem cells reside in the bone marrow and can produce all the cells that work in the blood. Because of their unique regenerative abilities, human stem cells are used in many ways in biomedical research and therapeutic development. New clinical applications are being explored using stem cells for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, autoimmune and metabolic disorders, and chronic inflammatory diseases, as well as blood cancers. Another reason stem cell biologists are excited about this field is that human stem cells could also be used for testing new drugs.
These procedures, which are used to treat leukemia, lymphoma and inherited blood disorders, save many lives each year and demonstrate the validity of stem cell transplantation as a therapeutic concept. Stem cells can be guided to become specific cells that can be used in people to regenerate and repair tissues damaged or affected by a disease. We will discuss in detail some of the reasons why a stem cell transplant may not work at all or may not work as well as expected. New areas of study include the efficacy of using human stem cells that have been programmed to form specific tissue cells for testing.
new drugs.
