How Magic Are Stem Cells?

Research on stem cells is advancing knowledge about how an living bodies develop from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells in adults. This promising area of science is also leading scientists to look at the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat disease, sometimes called regenerative or reparative medicine.

What are stem cells and why are they important?

Stem cells have two main characteristics that distinguish them from other types of cells. First, they are unspecialized cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division. The second is that under certain physiologic or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become cells with special functions such as the beating cells of the heart muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Scientists primarily work with two kinds of stem cells from animals and humans: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells, which have different functions and characteristics. Scientists discovered ways to obtain or derive stem cells from early mouse embryos more than 20 years ago. Many years of detailed study of the biology of mouse stem cells led to the discovery in 1998 of how to isolate stem cells from human embryos and grow the cells in the laboratory.

These are called human embryonic stem cells. The embryos used in these studies were created for infertility purposes through in vitro fertilization procedures and when they were no longer needed for that purpose, they were donated for research with the informed consent of the donor. Stem cells are important for living organisms for many reasons. In an embryo that is 3 to 5 days old stem cells in developing tissues give rise to the multiple specialized cell types that make up the heart, lung, skin, and other tissues.

In some adult tissues, such as bone marrow, muscle, and brain, specialized adult stem cells generate replacements for cells that are lost through normal wear and tear, injury, or disease. Scientists believe that stem cells may, at some point in the future, become the basis for treating diseases such as Parkinsons disease, diabetes, and heart disease. Currently heart disease and diabetes are at epidemic proportions in many parts of the world, and so great hope is placed on future cures using stem cell based treatments, but much work still remains to be done before these cures become a reality.

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