Stem Cells Explained
All living bodies are made up of cells. They are the basic unit of life. In humans, our bodies are made up of a range of different cell types, for example blood (haematopoietic cells); heart tissue (cardiomyocytes); liver (hepatocytes) and brain cells (neurones).
Stem Cells
Stem cells are a special type of cell that has the ability to renew other cells in the body. Stem cells can either make more stem cells (self-renew) or make mature specialised cells.
Stem cells are found everywhere in the body. In every body system, the cells need to be renewed, so stem cells are present to do this job. For example, stem cells in the bone marrow renew bones and stem cells in the skin renew hair and skin itself.
There are three main types of stem cell:
- they are found in adults in various types of tissue.
- babies' cord blood.
- embryos.
Why are Stem Cell Therapies Important?
Our cells are replenished naturally by our own stem cells, but eventually these wear out too. As our expectations of long life increase, so does the certainty that our longer lives will bring the chronic diseases that come with ageing as well as the cancers that arise from the genetic damage accumulated by ageing or worn out cells.
Stem cell therapies offer the promise of cell replacement to cure these chronic diseases – a new regenerative medicine.
Successful stem cell therapies already exist and have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Bone marrow transplants transfer healthy stem cells into cancer sufferers and bring them back to health. Stem cell transplantation also cures children with immune problems so severe that they would otherwise surely die from what to the rest of us is a trivial infection.
