Role of Stem Cell Treatment: What You Need to Know

Posted by Janice on April 28th, 2021

The growing use of stem cell treatment in transplants has enriched hopes to people that the regenerative strategy could one day become a treatment for a wide range of vexing diseases. Stem cells are primitive cells that can be classified into two main classes: pluripotent cells that can become any cell in the adult body, and multipotent cells that can become only a more limited number of cells. Stem cells, also called universal cells, can differentiate into cells, organs, or tissues with multiple functions under defined conditions due to their hematopoietic, regulatory and self-replicating features.

Stem cells have broad prospects in helping researchers understand and treat a variety of diseases, injuries and other health-related conditions. In recent years, the news has reported a large number of successful cases of using stem cell treatments, such as blood disorders, bone marrow transplants, leukemia and other diseases.

As more and more people know about the power of stem cells, a key question has grown in importance: How does stem cell treatment work? Stem cell treatment is a type of regenerative medicine that aims to repair damaged cells within the body by reducing inflammation and modulating the immune system. Specifically, stem cell treatment involves transplanting healthy stem cells into a patient to repair, or replace, damaged tissue or cells. These healthy stem cells are grown by researchers in the laboratory and manipulated to specialize into specific types of cells, such as heart muscle cells, blood cells or nerve cells.

For example, in a typical stem cell transplant for leukemia, very high doses of chemotherapy are used, sometimes combined with radiation therapy, to kill all the cancer cells. Then hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are given to replace those destroyed cells with the goal of producing new blood cells. Finally, these stem cells can help build a new immune system and attack cancer cells in a patient's body, thereby inhibiting the recurrence of leukemia.

One of the most important advantages of stem cell treatment is to avoid the possibility of immune rejection. Stem cells are undifferentiated and immature cells with weak or no expression of cell surface antigens. The patient's own immune system has an extremely low ability to recognize these undifferentiated cells, and their characteristics cannot be determined, thereby avoiding immune rejection and allergic reactions caused by organ transplantation, making it safe for allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Unprecedented developments in stem cell research herald a new era of hope and expectation for novel therapies. However, they pose a major challenge for regulatory agencies because the safety assessment standards for low-molecular drugs or other biopharmaceuticals are largely not applicable to cell-based treatments. It is worrying that some patients seeking cures and remedies are vulnerable to stem cell treatments that are illegal and potentially harmful. In addition, a major issue with stem cell treatment is that of tumorigenic potential. Therefore, the common feature of unlimited cell division shared by cancer cells and pluripotent stem cells must be better understood in order to avoid cancer formation.

Stem cell treatment is currently one of the most complex and most advanced clinical therapeutic methods. Faced with many diseases that cannot be overcome by traditional methods, stem cell treatment has brought hope to people. In order to better explore the great potential of stem cells, every step in the process of developing stem cell treatment, from research to application, needs to be rigorously scrutinized.