Scientific medical success has been reported for the repair and replacement of damaged cells in the bone marrow, but so far, only partly success has been reported for research conducted in heart and pancreatic stem cell division. There are two types of stem cells used in scientific research and medical applications: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The studies with the embryonic ones date back to the early 80s when mouse embryos allowed for superior biological research. These first investigations enabled scientists to come up with methods of deriving stem cells from human embryos at the end of the 20th century and then grow them in laboratories.

Even if morally and ethically debated, the use of the human embryonic stem cells in lab tests are considered by some people the only way to push medical science forward. The embryos result from in vitro fertilization projects, since only part of the embryos can get transferred and implanted in a womb. The remaining embryos can be passed to laboratory studies if the donor gives his/her consent. Another source of stem cells is the use of somatic cells that are reprogrammed to return to the initial unspecialized state.

The main moral concern is that of harming embryos, that are considered alive in spirit and not only in the physical form alone. While banned by president Bush in the United States, studies have once again been given the green light by the new American president Barrack Obama. Stem cells do remain the main hope of many health care providers in the fight against devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer, diabetes, leukemia, heart failure and lots of others. However, stem cell therapies are not fully known or available because this part of regenerative medicine has a lot more to unravel before becoming fully operational, safe and effective.

Injection is the only way of sending stem cell transplants into the bloodstream and once they get into the bone marrow, these stem cells specialize and initiate blood production. Normally, more than one transplant sessions are necessary, as the treatment cycles ought to follow the chemotherapy periodicity. How can stem cells contribute to blood formation? Well, these remarkable biological cellular formations can generate the three types of blood cells such as the red blood cells, the white blood cells and the platelets. The red cells carry the oxygen through the body, the white cells fight against bacteria acting as body defenses and the platelets regulate bleeding rate and blood clotting.

The blood and bone marrow naturally contain stem cells, but under the influence of chemotherapy drugs, they get destroyed without the possibility to regenerate without help. The stem cell transplants thus represent a method of restoring the blood cells production that would otherwise cease in the absence of the undifferentiated cells. Not all the cancer patients require stem cell transplants. In fact, several factors indicate whether the treatment is suitable for the patient or not, and the clearest examples are the patient’s responsiveness to the treatment, the health condition, the stage of the disease and so on.

In the past, only younger patients were chosen for stem cell transplants, but at present, age is no longer such a relevant criterion. What does indeed matter is the health of the internal organs such as kidneys, heart and lungs as well as the performance status in the cancer therapy. There are several types of stem cell transplants but people have only heard of just a few. And these include bone marrow transplants, peripheral stem cell blood transplants or cord blood transplants. Otherwise, the number of classifications and the criteria serving for such purposes is very large, although not necessary to the average person.

Bone marrow transplant represents the most basic form of stem cell transplantation, and the practice of this treatment has brought numerous successes. The cancer patient often needs a compatible donor. If the compatibility with a donor is not possible, and the intervention is pressing, then, the patient’s bone marrow tissue can be used but on the one condition that it be collected prior to the beginning of the chemotherapy treatment. The stem cells will be frozen and stored until the intervention.

Modern stem cell transplantation options include the use of umbilical cord blood or peripheral blood collected either from a donor or from the patient. Nevertheless, such procedures have just started being put into practice since they usually require modern technologies and special equipment. Hence, the bone marrow transplant still holds the main position as the most popular and widely used kind of stem cell transplantation in the world. It enjoys a high rate of success, although it often requires several transplants before complete regeneration of the blood. Normally, there will be a stem cell transplantation for every intensive chemotherapy session.

It is important that the doctor, the patient and his/her family as well as the donor be informed about the risks, the success rate, the advantages and the inconveniences of a stem cell transplantation. For instance, the donor as well as the patient have to be carefully prepared in order to know what the procedure involves. Most people fear the fact that the collection of bone marrow is incredibly painful. The methods used are no mystery, and the patient and donor should be familiar with everything that a stem cell transplantation involves.

Finding the right donor is the next challenge for stem cell transplant; in case no match is available, the patient’s individual stem cells will be used. The collection procedure for individual transfers will only be possible prior to the administration of the chemotherapy high-dose treatment. Until usage, the stem cells will be stored frozen. When a donor is available, then the transfer of cells occurs only just before the intervention without any necessity of storing the biological material. The variant of donor transplant is considered preferable given the chance of getting an immunity response at the patient’s individual cells.

Bone marrow collection was the only way to get the stem cells a few years ago, but science has made quite a progress in this direction. Such a procedure used to be pretty dreaded because of the pain and discomfort associated with it. Yet, medical advancement has made it possible to extract the stem cells necessary for the stem cell transplant from the patient’s or donor’s peripheral blood. Bone marrow transplants are still widely used, but peripheral blood collection is gradually changing things in this medical sector.

The stem cell transplant may also be performed with umbilical cord blood, but since the number of stem cells extracted from the umbilical cord is low, the procedure is definitely not so common. Recent discoveries have also proved that umbilical cord stem cells from more patients be combined and used to suit a specific medical condition. And finally, an even more rare or unusual case of stem cell transplant is from one identical twin to another, thanks to the huge compatibility rate between such individuals.

In 2004, a great success case marked the evolution of stem cell therapy when a team of Korean researchers used stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood and treated a patient who was immobilized because of a spinal cord injury. Presently, the woman has recovered almost completely, being able to walk, after a nineteen-year period during which she was not able to move. This stem cell therapy simply consisted in the injecting of stem cells into the injured spinal cord portion. Another major treatment in this medical domain is that of heart diseases. People worldwide can use such experimental medicine to treat their heart problems, but surely, they should also afford the intervention.

The blood cells formation is another territory conquered by stem cell therapy. Because of the cancer treatments or the cancerous diseases that attack the blood, regeneration of the specific cells is very difficult if not impossible. Moreover, the administration of very powerful medication for the reduction of tumors further damages the quality of the blood by killing the rapidly regenerating cells. The use of stem cell therapy for the improvement of the blood condition is one of the first successes reputed by medicine and stem cell research. The most common procedure involved consists of the bone marrow transplant from a donor to a patient.

Although the number of cures provided by stem cell therapy is theoretically unlimited, we’ll just mention one other practical achievement. Stem cells seem to work great in the treatment of baldness or hair loss by the specialization into hair follicle cells. This stem cell therapy consist in the collection of stem cells from healthy hair follicles, their growth in cultures, followed by the implantation once there are enough new follicles. Similar applications are available with various other treatments depending on the injury.

Unlike adult stem cells, embryonic stem groups can develop into absolutely any type of cells specific to the body. Moreover, stem cell research has proved the fact that stem cells collected from embryos are more valuable in the treatment of nervous disease. Bad bits can be identified for embryonic stem cells as well because very often they are rejected by the immune system. Such an issue ought to be known to parents who store stem cells from the umbilical cord blood, so that they may not be given false information that such samples can solve any future disease their child could be fighting against.

Lots of mysteries remain unsolved for the moment, and stem cell research needs to progress a bit further before coming up with new and viable treatments. The only kind of stem cell transplant that is no longer an issue or secret for the medical world is bone marrow transplantation, that has been practiced for almost fifty years now with great success. Otherwise, the rest of the cures available on the basis of stem cells are usually experimental and pretty expensive. For the moment, stem cell research needs to come up with other collection sources other than embryos.

It was in 2007 that the Advanced Cell Technology Institute announced the creation of three stem cell lines that were produced without the destruction of the parenting embryos. Such results of stem cell research have been unique so far in the world, but more novelties seem to change the evolution of experimental medicine. In the same year, 2007, it was discovered that the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus in the womb contains stem cells that can specialize and develop into organs, bones, nerves, muscles or blood vessels. This new resource for tissues could increase the possibility to develop methods for the treatment of injured or malfunctioning organs.

The American National Institute of Health claims that there are only twenty-one viable stem cell lines to be used. In the absence of embryonic cultures, scientists have also relied on adult stem cells to generate lines, even if the efforts have been more intense. Success was claimed even for the projects using umbilical cord blood as a source of stem cells. The only problem with such lineage is the genetic imprint included in the lineage, and this specificity limits the experiments, as they are not functional for the treatment of genetic disorders for instance.

Scientists claim that stem cell lines may also be developed from somatic cells that have been reprogrammed into becoming unspecialized all over again. The main benefit of such stem cell lines is that the donor’s DNA remains present in all the material, thus replacing the bone marrow stem cell transplants for instance. Scientists are presently making efforts to develop adequate environments for the cultivation of stem cell lines totally free of animal components.

Study patterns for stem cell lines development are quite numerous, and progress is being made into the creation of newer and more ethical ways of creating stem cell cures. For example, scientists are trying to isolate stem cells from living tissues without causing any harm to the organism. This would be the answer to all the prolifers’ protests against the use of human embryos for research, and no homicide doubt would cloud research. Although many other people only refer to embryos as human beings when they develop at superior stages, the debate remains open and opinions are definitely divided.

Some institutes receive more stem cell funding than others, with continuous support from the organizations interested in the development of this part of the medical science. CIRM for instance provides millions of dollars in the form of stem cell funding to Stanford’s Institute both for clinical studies and specialized projects planned over a two or four-year period. Part of the funding goes for research in the transplantation of stem cells while others in the pioneer treatment of autoimmune diseases such as sclerosis or scleroderma. The National Institute of Health is another important financial supporter of research centers that focus on stem cell biology.

All sorts of smaller associations provide stem cell funding to research centers, and here it suffices to mention the American Cancer Society, the Diabetes Foundation or the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. These groups act in the interest and on behalf of disease-specific groups that would benefit incredibly from the achievements and findings of stem cell therapy. Moreover, it is thanks to such financial supporters that clinical trials are possible in collaboration with patients declare irrecoverable. For the moment, stem cell research passes a new phase of growth with the elimination of the ban for stem cell research performed by Obama’s government in March 2009.

Therefore, we may expect a new stage of stem cell funding in the near future given the boost medical research centers received. There are clear justifications for the large sums of money necessary to research. Well, the demands and challenges of experimental science comes from the necessity of using advanced technologies. The biological material, the laboratory equipment, the qualified personnel, the special work environment and overall gear necessary for research are not at all cheap, and we’d be faced with a stagnation of research without the massive investments in this medical branch.

Although limited in number and extent, for the moment, stem cell cures do exist. With the exception of bone marrow transplantation that is widely practiced and almost ordinary, the rest of the stem cell treatments are experimental and very expensive. Stem cell cures are presently being tested for diabetes, muscular damage, Parkinson’s disease, cardiac problems, cancers, Alzheimer and many others. This means that the stem cell cures can be used both for regenerative and curative therapies. How does tissue regrowth function? Well, the insertion of stem cells in the wound represents the best way to insure a good healing and prevent scarring.

Stem cell cures have been developed from the umbilical cord blood and they are generally used in the treatment of blood cancer such as leukemia or lymphoma. Chemotherapy used to destroy tumors will also kill the rapidly growing cells in the bone marrow. Hence, in the absence of a transplant, the patient’s recovery may not be possible. All one needs under the circumstances is a matched donor to take the stem cells from and transplant them into the patient’s spine to stimulate the blood formation process. Other than this bone marrow transplant, the rest of the stem cell cures remain only potential treatments.

Other clinical tests for stem cell cures include the use of the treatment for the recovery of brain damage caused by strokes. It seems that a stimulation of the brain stem cells in the direction of accelerated division and thus an increase in the differentiation of newly formed cells could be enough for the recovery of adult patients with head injuries. Experiments on animals have also demonstrated that stem cell cures may be the answer to all sorts of tumors. This would be a major difference from the majority of the cancer treatments that destroy the tumor without any possibility of preventing it in the first place.

Yet, many people believe that stem cell blood production in laboratories is very distant. So far, only speculations can be made in relation to stem cell blood because experts cannot say whether their research will prove an incremental step forward or just another project without perspective or clear safe finality. Medical units continue to encourage and support blood donation because it remains the only possibility for surgery, transplants and other interventions. Stem cell blood formation will continue to be supported in several laboratories worldwide, and the problem of funding is not an issue just yet. There is enough money to continue research!

Another issue worth analyzing in relation to stem cell blood is not the artificial production of this vital human fluid, but the collection of the umbilical cord blood that is very rich in stem cells. The procedure is widely practiced and more and more parents believe in the possibility to solve future health problems, thanks to the umbilical cord stem cells stored in private or public banks. The main criticism is directed against private stem cell blood banks that that have transformed blood collection and storage into a lucrative business.

The fact is that no one can guarantee a treatment that is still in the experimental stages. No doubt, there is an immense potential to the use of umbilical stem cell blood, but no all potent treatments can be generated on its basis, at least for the moment. The storage of stem cell blood extracted from the umbilical cord could be a small fortune, and you may never be able to test its potential. The controversy will not be over too soon, and stem cell blood still makes a major issue and pivotal element related to stem cell research conducted all over the world.