|
|
 |
What is stem cell therapy
What Are Stem Cells?
Researchers have been able to grow certain types of stem cells apparently
indefinately in the laboratory. Called a Stem Cell line, these cells have
two very important properties. Firstly, they can self-renew or form ‘carbon
copies’ of themselves. Secondly, they can be made to differentiate,
or convert, into any one of the different types of specialised cell in
the human body. Stem Cells which can differentiate into any type of cell
in the body are referred to as pluripotent. For example, stem cell lines
dervied from the early embryo, or Embryonic Stem Cells, are pluripotent.
Some of our fully-developed tissues also posess stem cells, known as Adult
Stem Cells. These stem cells are different from Embryonic Stem Cells because
they cannot form any type of cell in the body, that is, they are not pluripotent.
Adult Stem Cells can, however, effectively replace a small number of cell
types within their tissue of origin.
A very recent breakthrough has shown that normal adult body cells can
be ‘reprogrammed’, or switched back, into stem cells that appear
to show all the poperties of Embryonic Stem Cells. This is done by ‘re-programming’
the nucleus of adult body cells using genetic modification so that the
cells revert back to their earliest developmental stage in the embryo.
What is Stem Cell Therapy?
Perhaps the most successful medical exploitation of stem cells to date
has been the use of bone marrow transplantation as therapy for a variety
of cancers of the blood and immune systems. Researchers are also hoping
to exploit other forms of Adult Stem Cell to treat diseased or damaged
tissues of patients.
Given their unrestricted potential to form any kind of cell in the body,
scientists have more recently begun to research the possibility of using
Embryonic Stem Cell lines to generate replacement cells for a range of
diseases where there are unmet medical needs. Because the Embryonic Stem
Cell lines can be grown in large amounts, it should be possible to generate
sufficient quantities of cells to replace damaged or diseased tissue in
patients. This type of approach is known as Stem Cell Therapy or Regenerative
Medicine. Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cell lines may also hold the
same promise as Embryonic Stem Cells in contributing to the development
of novel medical treatments and cell therapy.
GTAC's oversees clinical trials involving: “cells derived from
stem cell lines.”
This includes cell therapies derived from:
- Genetically modified cells
- Embryonic stem cell lines
- Multipotent stem cell lines
- Mesenchymal stem cell lines
- Foetal stem cell lines
- Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cell lines
|
|
Public
Health and Clinical Quality
Genetics
Human Genetics Commission 
Download
Adobe Acrobat reader for PDF files
Help with Portable Document
Format (PDF)
|
|
You
are here: 
