The stem cells are principally called the “master cells” of the human body owing to their aptitude to craft all other tissues, organs, and systems in the body. The stem cells are the building blocks of your blood and immune system. They are the factory of the blood structure and recurrently make new replicas of themselves and create cells that make every other type of blood i.e. Red blood Cells, White Blood Cells and Platelets. There are essentially three sources where stem cells can be straightforwardly found.
- Bone Marrow
- Peripheral Blood and
- Umbilical Cord Blood
Numerous researches done in this arena recommend that stem cells gotten from cord blood are comparatively more beneficial over those retrieved from bone marrow or peripheral blood since they are immunologic ally “younger” and seem to be more multipurpose. They also exhibit an imperative feature with embryonic stem cells and are able to segregate into virtually all cell varieties in the body. Secondly, it is easy to get stem cells from cord blood as they are readily gotten from the placenta at the time of delivery. Reaping stem cells from bone marrow necessitates a surgical process, implemented under general anesthesia and can cause post-operative pain or pose a minor risk to the donor. The assurance of using stem cells for medical treatments have been the attention of researches numerous projects that are displaying hopeful outcomes.
- Cord blood stem cells support in the treatment of ailments such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
- They have also proven their aptitude in the treatments for heart disease, permitting patients to fundamentally grow their own bypass.
- Stem cells have the ability to help treat several life-threatening sicknesses like leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, anemia, inherited sicknesses and all other scarcities of the immune system.
- Lifestyle ailments such as diabetes, liver disorders and heart sicknesses can also be treated with stem cells.
On the other hand, a broader variety of recipients can profit from cord blood stem cells. These can be stowed and uprooted back into the donor, to a family member or to an unconnected recipient. For bone marrow transplantation, there must be a virtually picture-perfect match of certain tissue proteins between the donor and the receiver. When stem cells from cord blood are employed, the donor cells seem more likely to take or engraft, even when there are fractional tissue disparities. Certain difficulties like graft versus host disease (GVHD), in which donor cells can attack the receiver’s tissues, are less likely to happen with cord blood than with bone marrow. This might be because cord blood has a subdued immune system and certain cells, typically active in an immune reaction, are not yet accomplished to attack the recipient. A research done in this arena publicized that kids who received a cord blood transplant from a closely coordinated sibling were 59 percent less likely to develop GVHD than kids who got a bone marrow transplant from a closely coordinated sibling. Cord blood also is less likely to encompass certain contagious agents, like some infections, that can pose a risk to transplant receivers. Furthermore, cord blood might have a bigger aptitude to generate new blood cells than bone marrow. Ounce for ounce, there are approximately 10 times as many blood-producing cells in cord blood. This fact advocates that a smaller number of cord blood cells are required for a fruitful transplantation.
What diseases can stem cells cure?
Umbilical cord blood is an opulent source of stem cells. These cells are the specialized cells that are able to segregate into other varieties of cells. They also have the aptitude to substitute affected cells with new cells. For this reason, cord blood stem cells have been used in countless transplants, where patients necessitate re growth of cells by substituting the affected ones. In this blog, we have seen how cord blood cells are being used to treat numerous lung and kidney sicknesses. By steering the transplant with cord blood stem cells, the researchers were able to treat the air route in lungs, impaired after an injury. This was a key breakthrough in the history of medical research and would be useful to perceive and comprehend diverse categories of lung diseases. Also, the scientists would now have the aptitude to test diverse drugs to treat the ailments and measure their effects on patients. The research exhibited that these cells were also useful to treat lung sicknesses like cystic fibrosis in infants with their own cord blood stem cells. In addition to that, the new development in the arena of stem cells also warrants better understanding in lung diseases and diverse periods of lung development.
With the speedy advancement in medical science, there has also been an equivalent development in the quantity of preserved cord blood units being used in regenerative medicine applications. If expectant parents stockpile their baby’s cord blood in a family bank, the stem cells are instantaneously available for usage in medical treatments, including forthcoming therapies to overhaul or replace impaired heart tissues. Consequently, a baby’s cord blood could prove to be a life-saving treatment alternative if that child is born with an inborn heart defect, or later in life following an abrupt and serious heart attack. In regenerative medicine, the newest scientific evidence recommends that using one’s own stem cells likely delivers more promising outcomes. The procedure of finding and developing new medicines is long and expensive. It takes years and billions of rupees for one single new drug to be developed from the period in which a contender molecule was recognized to the ultimate stage of regulatory sanction for marketing. The new age of stem cells and regenerative medicine does not abbreviate this procedure. In contrast, it presents new challenges in the way via translation into approved therapy. The challenges are because of the totally new and different structure of the final invention. Patients are treated with living cells rather than active molecules. The path to develop new cell based therapy is not less lengthy, intricate or exorbitant than the road to develop traditional medicines.