adult stem cell
Few people know that almost all the body tissues contain undifferentiated cells or adult stem cell formations necessary for the tissue and organ regeneration in case of injury or disease damage. While an embryonic stem cell grows in the blastocyst, the initial cellular organization out of which the embryo evolves, scientists still don’t know anything about the origin of an adult stem cell as part of mature tissues. The capacity of the adult stem cells to generate new tissues has caused a revolution in the medical world: this is in fact the explanation for the success of bone marrow transplants.
The great discovery is that a single adult stem cell can evolve in different specialized categories, according to individual conditions. Research has gone so far that we presently know there are adult stem cells in the heart and in the central nervous system. The study that put the basis of the research on the adult stem cell was conducted fifty years ago when two types of cells were discovered in the structure of the bone marrow. A first group is responsible for the formation of all the blood cells necessary to the body, while a second one works to produce connective tissues, cartilages, bones and fat.
Discoveries are undoubtedly amazing, but adult stem cell research has had difficulties in creating laboratory cultures on the basis of samples taken from adult tissues. Although stem cells are present in a small number in all tissues, their capacity to proliferate is limited, which leads to the difficulty to create large quantities in the laboratory. An adult stem cell is believed to remain inactive in tissues, and it only activates when necessary because of some physical trauma or body failure. The major challenge at the moment is how to start cell culture and manipulate cells to treat diseases.
Should adult stem cell research repute more victories, maybe solutions will become available to replace the insulin generating cells of diabetes patients or the dopamine-producing ones of Parkinson’s disease patients. The same goes true for the prevention of heart attacks by the regeneration of the cardiac muscle tissues. Various genetic experiments are further conducted to identify and separate adult stem cell groups in the attempt to make them even more widely useful to the treatment of diseases.