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When an organ is degenerating, the cells are breaking
down and losing their ability to function. Stem cell therapy is an
amazing modern medical advancement that goes straight to the source
of the problem—damage on the cellular level. Stem cell therapy is a
procedure by which damaged, diseased, or malfunctioning cells
anywhere in the body are replaced by introducing healthy stem cells
to that area of the body. Stem cell therapy is a promising treatment
for all kinds of degenerative diseases because of the stem cells’
regenerative abilities. Stem cell therapy
sounds like a relatively new concept, but there are stem cell
therapy treatments with which most of us are already familiar. Bone
marrow transplant is one type of stem cell therapy (specifically
hematopoietic cell therapy) that has been in use for the past 40
years for regenerating the blood and immune systems, especially for
the treatment of leukemia.
The stem cells are infused directly into the
patient's blood stream, which migrate to the bone marrow. Inside the
bone marrow environment, the stem cells begin differentiating into
the three blood cell types - red blood, white blood and platelets.
This initiates the regeneration of the patient's blood and immune
system.
A new type of stem cell therapy (specifically
mesenchymal cell therapy) has come on the scene in recent years for
replacement of damaged or diseased tissues and organs and also for
treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, providing relief from what
was once thought to be a hopeless cause. The goal of mesenchymal
cell therapy is to treat diseases of non-hematopoietic tissues in an
analogous fashion to treating leukemia with hematopoietic stem cell
transplantation.
It is anticipated that virtually any tissue many
be amenable to cellular therapy and to understand the safety and
efficacy of the same several hundred clinical trials are underway
for a whole host of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease,
Atherosclerosis, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Inflammatory Bowel
Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis
and many others.
Bone Marrow Stem Cell Therapy
Currently the best-known and widely used
therapy, bone marrow transplant is used to treat leukemia and other
types of cancers as well as various blood disorders.
Leukemia is a cancer of white blood cells (also
called leukocytes). It occurs when leukocytes begin to grow and
function abnormally, becoming cancerous. Successful treatment for
leukemia depends on getting rid of all the abnormal leukocytes in
the patient, allowing healthy ones to grow in their place. To do
this, the patient's existing bone marrow and abnormal leukocytes are
first killed using a combination of chemotherapy and radiation - and
the donor bone marrow containing healthy stem cells is introduced
into the patient's bloodstream. The therapy is deemed successful
when the stem cells migrate into the patient's bone marrow and begin
producing new, healthy leukocytes to replace the abnormal cells
Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cell Therapy
Traditionally discarded as after-birth,
umbilical cord blood is a rich source of multi-potent stem cells
that have proven useful in treating the same types of medical
conditions - as those treated using bone marrow stem cells and
peripheral blood stem cells.
Umbilical cord blood is collected soon after birth and stored in a
stem cell bank, where stem cells are harvested from
the cord blood and cryo-preserved at -196oC. Umbilical cord blood
stem cells hold immense potential for stem cell therapies, due to
their versatile nature and easy availability. While compared to bone
marrow or peripheral blood stem cells, they are less prone to
rejection as they have not yet developed the features that can be
recognized and attacked by the recipient's immune system. And as
umbilical cord blood lacks well-developed immune cells, there is a
lesser chance of the transplanted cells attacking the recipient's
body - a problem called graft versus host disease.
The first umbilical cord blood transplant was performed in 1988 in
France, which successfully treated a 5-year old boy with Fanconi's
Anaemia. To date there have been more than 10,000 umbilical cord
blood stem cell transplants reported worldwide.
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