With living robots, scientists unlock cells' power to heal

Near the entrance to Michael Levin's lab at Tufts, four deer antlers are mounted on wooden boxes. They represent an incredible feat of regeneration in mammals: Deer shed their antlers annually and regrow the bone, blood vessels, ...

Stem cell research paves way toward regenerating skeletal muscle

Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA are one step closer to developing stem cell therapies to regenerate skeletal muscle in humans. Working in mice, the UCLA ...

Scientists invent new way to sort cells by type using light

Researchers have developed and demonstrated a new method for high-throughput single-cell sorting that uses stimulated Raman spectroscopy rather than the traditional approach of fluorescence-activated cell sorting. The new ...

Human urine-derived stem cells have robust regenerative potential

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) researchers, who were the first to identify that stem cells in human urine have potential for tissue regenerative effects, continue their investigation into the ...

New work upends understanding of how blood is formed

The origins of our blood may not be quite what we thought. Using cellular "barcoding" in mice, a groundbreaking study finds that blood cells originate not from one type of mother cell, but two, with potential implications ...

page 1 from 11

Stem cell treatments

Stem cell treatments are a type of cell therapy that introduce new cells into damaged tissue in order to treat a disease or injury. Many medical researchers believe that stem cell treatments have the potential to change the face of human disease and alleviate suffering. The ability of stem cells to self-renew and give rise to subsequent generations that can differentiate offers a large potential to culture tissues that can replace diseased and damaged tissues in the body, without the risk of rejection.

A number of stem cell treatments exist, although most are still experimental and/or costly, with the notable exception of bone marrow transplantation. Medical researchers anticipate one day being able to use technologies derived from adult and embryonic stem cell research to treat cancer, Type 1 diabetes mellitus, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, cardiac failure, muscle damage and neurological disorders, along with many others.

More research is needed concerning both stem cell behavior and the mechanisms of the diseases they could be used to treat before most of these experimental treatments become realities.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA