Stem Cells: Potential to Treat a Wide Range of Diseases

Stem cells have the potential to treat a wide range of diseases. Here, discover why these cells are such a powerful tool for treating disease—and what hurdles experts face before new therapies reach patients.

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Stem cells are preliminary body cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated. Under controlled environment in the body or a clinical laboratory, these cells divide to form more cells called daughter cells.

Due to the advent of modern health science, these cells play a major role in understanding the occurrence of diseases, generation of advanced regenerative medicines, and drug discovery. There are certain sources such as embryo, bone marrow, body fats, and umbilical cord blood amongst others, where stem cells are generated.

Neurodegeneration

Research has been conducted on the effects of stem cells on animal models of brain degeneration, such as in Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease. There have been preliminary studies related to multiple sclerosis.

Healthy adult brains contain neural stem cells which divide to maintain general stem-cell numbers, or become progenitor cells. In healthy adult laboratory animals, progenitor cells migrate within the brain and function primarily to maintain neuron populations for olfaction (the sense of smell). Pharmacological activation of endogenous neural stem cells has been reported to induce neuroprotection and behavioral recovery in adult rat models of neurological disorder.

Blood-Cell Formation

The specificity of the human immune-cell repertoire is what allows the human body to defend itself from rapidly adapting antigens. However, the immune system is vulnerable to degradation upon the pathogenesis of disease, and because of the critical role that it plays in overall defense, its degradation is often fatal to the organism as a whole. Diseases of hematopoietic cells are diagnosed and classified via a subspecialty of pathology known as hematopathology.

The specificity of the immune cells is what allows recognition of foreign antigens, causing further challenges in the treatment of immune disease. Identical matches between donor and recipient must be made for successful transplantation treatments, but matches are uncommon, even between first-degree relatives. Research using both hematopoietic adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells has provided insight into the possible mechanisms and methods of treatment for many of these ailments.

Brain and spinal cord injury

Stroke and traumatic brain injury lead to cell death, characterized by a loss of neurons and oligodendrocytes within the brain. Clinical and animal studies have been conducted into the use of stem cells in cases of spinal cord injury.[24][25][26][20]