According to the Department of Health and Human Services, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States (1). The medical community is constantly looking for new technologies and discoveries to treat heart disease more effectively. Methods include mechanical based therapies such as artificial heart valves and drug based approaches as with anticoagulant medications. Recently, exciting new discoveries have been made by the scientific community in the development of stem cell based therapies. If scientist could identify and cultivate cells that would reestablish oxygenated blood flow to damaged heart tissue and generate new muscle tissue it would change the landscape of cardiovascular medicine. Actually, this process has already begun as research focuses on a specific cell with these qualities, the mesenchymal stem cell.
Mesenchymal stem cells originate from the mesoderm, the middle germ layer of an embryo, and play a vital role in the formation of connective tissue such as bone, cartilage, marrow, fat and blood. They are also precursor cells that help to produce cardiac, skeletal, and smooth muscle. Mesenchymal stem cells are found in every organ of the body but are most commonly obtained from bone marrow. Mesenchymal stem cells are classified as multi-potent stem cells. Multi-potent stem cells can transform into many different cell types that are of the same lineage. These innate traits make them prime candidates for use in developing heart disease treatments. While research and clinical trials are still in their infant stages, mesenchymal stem cells possess many desirable characteristics necessary to successfully regenerate heart tissue and restore heart function after heart attack.
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The wide range of prospective uses for stem cells could greatly improve the health and wellbeing of many people. In stem cell treatments, undifferentiated cells are programmed to form specific cells, which can then be transplanted to the afflicted area. Stems cells can possibly treat afflictions including “Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis” (“Stem Cell Basics”). Another important use is in drug testing. Drugs can be tested on stem cells that develop into the target tissue before using it on human test subjects, which improves safety. Finally, transplantation of organs created from stem cells could eliminate the need for human...
“Through the isolation and manipulation of cells, scientists are finding ways to identify young, regenerating ones that can be used to replace damaged of dead cells in diseased organs. This therapy is similar to the process of organ transplant, only the treatment consists of the transplantation of cells rather than organs. The cells that have shown by far the most promise of supplying diseased organs with healthy cells are called stem cells.” (Chapter Preface)
New cells are often produced in the body during growth and development. In addition, new cells also develop as the body repairs and remodels its tissues after an injury. These new cells come from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are considered as multipotent cells. MSCs are found in various parts of the body during growth and development, but in adults, they are present in the bone marrow, where they later differentiate, mature and migrate to become more specialized cells with unique functions. These cells' potential to develop into bone cells, cartilage cells, muscle cells and fat cells makes their role in regeneration, repair and remodelling important, especially when the body undergoes the normal process of aging or recovers from disease or injury.
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As stated on the Neostem website, “Stem cells have remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth.” They are used for cell therapeutics and the advantages are many. They offer a source of renewable cells to replace the damaged or dead cells that can be cause disabilitating ...
The number of heart patients is increasing day by day. The need of new therapies is getting higher since the heart muscle has no ability to regenerate, especially after getting damaged. Heart-transplant has been one of the solutions for heart failure. However, the amount of heart donor is small compared to the demand and there are other complications that need to be concerned as well (Leor et al. 2005). Therefore, scientists have worked hard to find alternative therapies, namely cell transplantation to create and engineer the cells to possibly use as an alternative in treating heart diseases. There few heart diseases involve in tissue regeneration application, however this paper will only cover myocardial infarction and dysfunctional heart valves.
Research on stem cells is advancing knowledge about how an organism develops from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells in adult organisms. This promising area of science is also leading scientists to investigate the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat disease, which is often referred to as regenerative or reparative medicine. There is genuine scientific excitement over the concept of using the body's own cellular building blocks to regenerate damaged or ageing organs. Stem cells are one of the most fascinating areas of biology today. But like ...
Stem cells offer great promise for success in future medical treatments. However, there still remains to be biased opinions on whether or not the use of stem cell for research is the most appropriate and effective tool for medical research. This topic is especially important for people who are suffering from disease that is capable of being treated through stem cell use. For these people, the treatment has the potential to change their outlook on life to a positive one. The advancements are diverse and have the potential to help cure numerous diseases and illnesses. Scientists are striving to find even more ways than they have already to repair damaged tissue in the human body and cure these diseases entirely through the usage of stem cells, and scientists believe that this will lead to further medical advancements for researchers.
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Stem cells offer the capability to develop into many different cell types in the body in the time of early life and growth. Furthermore, in many cell tissues they serve as an internal repair system, dividing almost without
“Top Ten Things to Know About Stem Cell Treatments.” Www.closerlookatstemcells.org ISSCR. Web 1 November 2013
For example, mesenchymal stromal cells are sometimes used to create a location for blood stem cells in the bone marrow. In the bone marrow, only 0.01% of the cells are actually said to be mesenchymal stromal cells (Haddad & Saldanha-Araujo, 2014). These cells are capable of acting on all the cells in the immune system, which allows them to undergo proliferation of T cells. Since MSCs are capable of doing this, they are used to treat many diseases. Mesenchymal stromal cells are also responsible for secretion of soluble factors and regulating T-cell generation.
Xin et al. (2014) states that fibroblasts can be reprogrammed into (iPS) cells, which are cells that display properties of embryonic stem (ES) cells, through four pluripotency gene transcription factors, known as OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and MYC- (OSKM) (p. 537). These transcription factors assist with the conversion of (iPS) cells into fibroblasts, which are differentiated into cardiomyocytes and later used for cardiac regeneration. As a matter of fact, cardiomyocytes derived from human (iPS) cells were observed and used for specific disease models, and many laboratories have established various disease models using (iPS) cells as well (Yamakawa et al.,2015, p. 2). This clearly explains the importance of cardiomyocytes generated from (iPS) cells and the role these cells play in not only cardiac regeneration, but disease modeling as
Researchers in this field are seek to know how stem cells can be used to develop into specialized cells or tissue, which aims restore lost function in damaged organs or even grow new fully functioning organs for transplant.