Many people will be familiar with the term Stem Cells. Yet, a majority still have no idea what it truly is.
In fact, when I asked a few people recently, one thought that its some kind of vegetable!
Stem cells are...
Put simply, stem cells are the basic building blocks in our body. Theoretically, they can be transformed into any other kind of cell.
To quote the National Institute of Health, stem cells "have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body. Serving as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive."
To date, two major types of stem cells have been identified, which are embryonic and adult stem cells.
Importance of stem cells
Why are stem cells important? They have HUGE potential. They allow us to grow new organs, new bones, new limbs, literally anything we possess in our body. Organ donations would no longer be necessary. If we can grow our own organs, we can use them to replace any damaged or diseased ones that we have. This would also eliminate the problem of rejection, since the grown organ would be an exact duplicate.
Stem cells and cancer treatment
Stem cells have a major role in cancer treatment and research. A form of stem cell therapy is already used, for example, in the form of bone marrow transplants, which is used to treat leukemia and other types of cancer, as well as various blood disorders. However, this process merely involves taking something - a blood stem cell to be precise - which we know that works and putting it in patients.
According to Cancer Research UK, an organisation which supports cancer research in the United Kingdom, What is interesting is that stem cells and cancer cells are remarkably alike in many ways. And so scientists may be able to better understand cancer by studying stem cells. In fact, in doing so, some scientists now believe that cancer is directly caused by faulty stem cells called cancer stem cells.
Indeed, that may explain why cancers relapse - because cancer treatments do not, or rather cannot as of yet, tackle cancer stem cells.
Applications of stem cell research
For those who already have cancer, stem cells may hold for them the promise of new organs without any kinds of drawback in the future. They may be able to discard the diseased organ and put in the new one, though that would be over-simplying the process!
But the ultimate goal would be to see how we can stop cancer from ever developing, and scientists may be able to answer that question with stem cell research. It would allow them to observe cell growth right from its very birth. Armed with that data, they may then be able to see how they can nullify the cancer development process.
While such results are still a long way off, other research efforts using stem cells have already started to bear fruit.
In a Jan 2009 article of Medical News Today, Israeli researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Rambam Medical Center reported success in using stem cells to grow a cancerous tumor in a mouse that mimics the way the tumor would develop in the patient's body.
This discovery may help pave the way toward personalised cancer treatment, a concept which many Singaporeans may be familiar with given that the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) has used it in its projects, including one to develop personalised drug treatments for liver cancer patients in 2005.
Looking ahead
We can look forward to even more exciting breakthroughs in the future, as Geron, a biopharmaceutical corporation in America, announced in Jan 2009 that it is embarking on the world's first human clinical trial of embryonic stem cell-based therapy.
NCCS too will no doubt be involved in leading the field as well, building upon its experience in research and clinical trials.
References:
http://stemcells.nih.gov
http://www.nccs.com.sg
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/
http://www.cancercenter.com/stem-cell/stem-cell-faqs.cfm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/135477.php
http://www.geron.com/media/pressview.aspx?id=863
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