Stem Cell Therapy in the future
Medical science has great expectations of
stem cells. A great deal of research is therefore currently being conducted on the various types of stem cells and their therapeutic applications.
Repair of damage
Many stem cell applications fall into the category of ‘regenerative medicine’, the replacement or repair of damaged or lost tissue. Generally, this involves research with embryonic stem cells or stem cells from bone marrow.
Medical science expects umbilical cord blood stem cells to be at least as effective, if not more so (I), in the repair of tissue. After all, they are young and vital (II) and are not associated with rejection phenomena.
A few examples:
- Research on how autologous stem cells can repair heart muscle tissue after a heart attack appears to be well advanced (III). Clinical studies are showing positive results (IV). In Europe, research is also being carried out on this application (V). Findings for patients with chronic heart disease also appear promising (VI).
- Investigators have high hopes that stem cells will in future play a role in the treatment of diabetes (VII). I the case of autoimmune disease such as Lupus (VIII) and juvenile arthritis (IX), the possibilities are also being investigated.
- ‘Tissue engineering’ is the artificial development of tissues, in which stem cells are sown on a synthetic substrate to culture skin, heart valve tissue and bone. This could lead to many applications in surgery. Various successful animal trials have already been conducted in this direction (X).
- Stem cells might play a role in gene therapy. Some disorders are caused by the poor functioning of a small piece of genetic material. If a defective gene is replaced by a healthy gene in a number of stem cells, these ‘repaired’ stem cells might have a curative effect after autologous transplantation (XI).
The list of diseases that scientists think could be amenable to stem cell therapy is even longer. Examples include kidney failure, colitis, cirrhosis of the liver, eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and a completely new approach to cancer.
All these applications for stem cells are still at an experimental stage. It may therefore be some while before they become part of medicine’s standard range of therapeutic methods. Scientists agree, however, that stem cells will play a role in the ‘medicine of the future’.
