Stem Cells in Disease

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Using Stem Cells

Stem cells are unspecialised cells. The cells can specialise into any type of cell. This makes stem cells very useful for treating disease.

Sources

Stem cells can be taken from three main sources -
- Adult stem cells (taken from adult body tissues).
- Embryonic stem cells (taken from embryos).
- Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS).

Benefits

There are many benefits to using stem cells in disease.
Stem cells can be used to reduce preventable deaths.
- E.g. Stem cells could be used to grow organs for organ transplants to reduce wait times for transplants.
Stem cells can be used to treat conditions that decrease the quality of life.
- E.g. Stem cells could be used to replace the damaged cells in the spinal cord that cause paralysis.

Disadvantages

There are some disadvantages to using stem cells.
Obtaining stem cells from embryos is a controversial issue for ethical reasons.
Some people believe using human embryos as source of stem cells is depriving an embryo of life.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS)

Stem cells have the potential to help a large number of human diseases. Research is developing into the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) to treat disease.

Pluripotent cells

Pluripotent cells are stem cells that are able to divide in unlimited numbers and produce any type of cell that makes up the body.
Pluripotent cells can be extracted from embryos to treat disease.
Using embryos to extract stem cells is an ethical concern for some people because they believe the embryos have a right to life.
iPS cells help avoid these ethical issues.

Somatic cells

iPS cells are produced from a specialised adult somatic (body) cell.
Somatic cells are specialised.
Specialised cells cannot be used to treat disease.

Producing iPS cells

Somatic cells are converted to iPS cells by activating genes using appropriate protein transcription factors.
This makes somatic cells become unspecialised so they can be used to treat disease.
iPS cells can be made from a patient's own body cells. This also decreases the chance of rejection during transplants (the immune system attacks the cells because they are foreign) because they are their own cells.

Treating Disease

Stem cells represent a huge interest in scientific research due to their potential in medical therapies. They are already used for:

Bone marrow transplants

Bone marrow transplants are used to treat blood and immune disorders.
Bone marrow contains multipotent stem cells that can produce all types of blood cell.

Drug research

Stem cells are used to grow artificial tissues.
Drugs can be tested on these artificial tissues before being tested on humans.

Developmental biology

Stem cells can be used to learn more about how an embryo develops and how organs are formed.
Learning about developmental biology can help improve medicine by informing us why organs fail or have abnormalities.

Potential future research

Stem cells can be used to produce new organs or tissue for transplants.
Stem cells can also be used to treat irreversible diseases (e.g. diabetes or paralysis).
Stem cells could be injected at the site of the disorder or problem and encouraged to differentiate into the required specialised cell.