Stem Cells Research

Stem cell research has gained a lot of momentum in the past few years-due to the potential and controversies surrounding it! A lot of scientists and researchers claim that stem cells can help in curing grave diseases like type 1 diabetes, Alzheimer?s disease, multiple sclerosis, as well as spinal cord injuries where as other argue about the ethics of producing them. The debate is still continues but we have to reach a standpoint somewhere, and look at the positive side than harp about the negatives!

What are stem cells?

Stem cells are the undifferentiated cells present in an organism which have the potential to develop into specialized organs or tissues. The stem cells divide through mitotic division and after division, they can either remain as a stem cell or grow into another type of cell, having specialized functions such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

Stem Cells are of two types- embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells. The embryonic stem cells are derived from human embryos or the inner mass of the blastocyst and are pluripotent- meaning that they are able to divide into any type of specialized cell whereas the adult stem cells are found among the differentiated tissues or organs and have the potential to yield the same type of cells of a specialized tissue or organ. They also have the capacity to renew or repair any damage to the tissue or organ.

There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the stem cells. The stem cells have the ability to grow into specialized types of organs- which means that they can be used for organ transplants because they can be grown to yield specific types of organs. Moreover it has been found out that stem cells can be used for curing diseases like cancer, Alzheimer?s disease, Parkinson?s disease, multiple sclerosis, and so on. So, one can see the tremendous potential which these cells have!

However, the advocators of human life despise or do not support this research because the extraction of embryonic stem cell requires the destruction of embryos- which means the end of a human life! Hence, the opposers of stem cell research do not regard it as ethical. President Bush has also strongly rejected the research on embryonic stem cells because he feels that this research in fact, destroys a human embryo! Funds devoted to stem cell research are being taken away due to strong oppositions by various ethical communities.

Even though stem cell research holds a lot of potential, yet it is being criticized on moral and ethical grounds. In the mean while we can just sit back and hope that people realize the immense value of this research and start advocating it!

Researches on the stem cell are being carried out and the scientists are very eager to know that how organism is able to develop into complex organism from a single cell. Researches are also being carried out that how the dead cells are being replaced by the healthy cells. 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.

Stem cells are one of the most famous and popular field of research in the field of bio-technology in recent times. But like many growing fields of scientific query, research on stem cells raises scientific questions as rapidly as it generates new discoveries.

The articles which I am writing are meant to answer following questions of the readers. For example, what are stem cells? What different types of stem cells are there and where do they come from? What is the potential for new medical treatments using stem cells? What research is needed to make such treatments a reality?

What are stem cells?
Stem cells have two important characteristics that distinguish them from other type of cells, but they are unspecialized cells that renew themselves for a long period of time through cell division.

The second is that under certain physiologic or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become cells with special functions such as the beating cells of the heart muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Scientist work with primarily two kinds of cells which are as follows:

Embryonic stem cells.
Adult stem cells.
These two really have different functioning and characteristics.

Importance of stem cells
The stem cells are important to the living organism for many reasons. In the three to five days the old embryo called the blastocyst, stem cells in the developing tissues gives rise to multiple rise cell types that make up the heart, lungs, skins and other tissues. In some adult tissues such as bone marrow, muscles, brains discrete population of stem cells generate the replacement of cells that are lost through normal wear and tear, injury or disease.

As scientists learn more about stem cells, it may become possible to use the cells not just in cell-based therapies, but also for screening new drugs and toxins and understanding birth defects. However, as mentioned above, human embryonic stem cells have only been studied since 1998. Therefore, in order to develop such treatments scientists are intensively studying the fundamental properties of stem cells, which include:

Determining precisely how stem cells remain unspecialized and self renewing for many years.
Identifying the signals that cause stem cells to become specialized cells.
All the cases really prove that the stem cells can really prove out to be really a milestone in the field of biotechnology.