What is Cell Medicine?
Cell medicine is the use of stem cells or their derivatives to treat a wide variety of
diseases. It can involve a range of cells, including hematopoietic (blood-forming)
stem cells, bone marrow stem cells, skeletal muscle stem cells kwwl.marketminute, mesenchymal stem
cells, lymphocytes, dendritic cells and pancreatic islet cells.

Stem cells can be used to replace virtually any tissue or organ that has been
damaged or diseased. They also can be used to develop new therapies for diseases,
such as heart disease and diabetes.
The key to a successful cell therapy is making sure that the stem cells have the right
characteristics and are safe for patients to receive. This involves growing them in
the right conditions, testing them in animals to make sure they are not harmful, and
then moving them into human trials.
Developing new treatments requires many years of research and development.
Here’s what scientists are learning about the process of creating stem cell therapies:
One of the biggest challenges in cell medicine is getting stem cells to specialize into
different cell types, a process called differentiation. This is critical for treating
diseases, because it is how stem cells become specialized and can be injected into
people.
Some stem cells are derived from embryos, while others are derived from the
patient’s own tissues. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent (pluo-RIP-uh-tunt),
meaning that they can turn into any cell type in the body. They are especially
valuable for repairing or replacing damaged tissue, such as heart muscle after a
heart attack.

Researchers have developed a method to reprogram multipotent adult stem cells
into pluripotent ones, which are more similar to embryonic stem cells and are called
induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. They can be made from a patient’s own
fibroblasts or other types of tissue cells.
iPSCs can then be grown in the laboratory and used to create cell lines, which are
then used for research and development. Several clinical studies are underway that
utilize these cell lines for a number of applications, including cartilage repair and
heart muscle replacement.
In addition to iPSCs, other sources of stem cells include umbilical cord blood and
amniotic fluid from pregnant women. These sources are particularly useful for
treating diseased or injured tissue, because the cells contain special genes that can
be reprogrammed to generate a specific cell type.
While there is a lot of controversy around the use of embryonic stem cells in medical
research, their versatility makes them an important tool for regenerative medicine.
They can be used to treat a number of diseases, such as diabetes or a degenerative
eye condition that causes blindness.
It can take more than a decade to develop new stem cell therapies. It takes time to
grow the right stem cells, test them in animal models, and make sure they are safe
for patients to receive.

Another challenge is obtaining cells from patients who are not able to donate their
own stem cells, such as those with severe cancers or blood disorders. Autologous
cell transplantation is a possible strategy, but it can be difficult to create large
batches of quality-controlled cells.