Stem Cell Treatments

Medical researchers believe that stem cell treatments have the potential to change the face of human disease and alleviate suffering. A number of current stem cell treatments already exist, although they are not commonly used because they tend to be experimental and not very cost-effective.

In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat cancer, spinal cord injuries, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other diseases and impairments.

However, there still exists a great deal of social and scientific uncertainty surrounding stem cell research, which will only be overcome through years of intensive research and by gaining the acceptance of the public.

Furthermore, many technical difficulties remain which hinder the ultimate goals in stem cell therapeutics. Expanding stem cell populations extracted from patients remains a large problem.

Also, even once these populations are expanded, implanted stem cells may not expand or grow efficiently enough to add enough corrective factor to be beneficial for treatment. These and other technical problems remain to be solved.

Current treatments

For over 30 years, bone marrow (adult) stem cells have been used to treat cancer patients with conditions such as leukemia and lymphoma. During chemotherapy, most growing cells are killed by the cytotoxic agents.

These agents not only kill the leukemia or neoplastic cells, but also those which release the stem cells from the bone marrow. These are therefore removed before chemotherapy, and are re-injected afterwards.

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