An Assessment Of Adult Stem Cells

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An Assessment Of Adult Stem Cells
Bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell transplants are utilized for over 40 years as therapy for blood disorders including leukemia and lymphoma, amongst many more. Scientists also have demonstrated that stem cells reside in most tissues of the body and research continues to discover ways to identify, extract, and proliferate these cells for further use in therapy. Scientists hope to give therapies for diseases including type I diabetes and repair of heart muscle following heart attack.

Stem cells have the potential to develop into almost any tissue in the human body. From growing organs to treating diabetes, many future medical advances are hoped to originate from stem cells.

Bone marrow harvesting is becoming a relatively routine procedure. Bone marrow is generally aspirated from the posterior iliac crests while the donor is under either regional or general anesthesia. This is a hard procedure in donors who are smaller in relation to the recipient, including sibling donors, and several aspirations may be required for an adequate mononuclear cell dose.

Embryonic stem cells are obtained from an incredibly early period in growth, generally the blastocyst stage, which in the human forms about 5 days after fertilization of an egg. A blastocyst is a largely hollow ball, just visible to the naked eye. Inside is a clump of approximately 150 cells, called the inner cell mass, that would eventually form the entire body of the animal that was developing. Embryonic stem cells are formed by removing the cells from the inner cell mass and growing them in culture.