Wisconsin Stem Cell Now Stem Cells in Wisconsin

What is regenerative medicine, and what role does it play in the field of medical research?

For centuries, medical research has sought to treat injuries and degenerative diseases that lead to organ failure and chronic health conditions. Many of these conditions are genetic, and have been a leading cause of pain, suffering, and even death for generations of Americans. From the time of the first blood transfusions in the eighteenth century, medical researchers have sought to replace diseased or damaged tissue through organ transplantation. Although some initially opposed the concept of organ transplantation on religious grounds, on the basis that it altered the human body as God had made it, nonetheless millions of lives have been saved by heart, lung, kidney and other organ transplant surgeries. The vast majority of Americans consider it commonplace and entirely moral to alleviate suffering by replacing diseased human tissue with healthy donor tissue.

Organ transplantation has been hampered by long waiting lists for donor organs and difficulties in overcoming the human bodys natural tendency to reject foreign tissue. As a result, researchers have developed mechanical and synthetic devices that can function as artificial organs and tissues. These advances were also criticized by a vocal minority on religious grounds, on the basis that the transplantation of artificial organs into patients diminished the dignity of the human body. However, once again the vast majority of Americans hailed breakthroughs like artificial hearts and insulin pumps for the countless lives that they saved and for the human suffering that they alleviated.

Unfortunately, artificial medical devices are not a complete substitute for the healthy organs that they are designed to replace. In addition, despite advances in nanotechnology, researchers are still struggling to artificially replace human biological functions that occur at a cellular level. Today the search continues for ways to completely cure damaged and diseased human organs and tissue through artificial replacements.

Meanwhile, beginning in the 1970s, significant progress was made in the field of recombinant DNA. Researchers used strands of human DNA inserted into bacteria to manufacture drugs, proteins and artificial hormones that exactly mimic their parallels in the human body. For example, for decades diabetics stayed alive by replacing the human insulin that their bodies no longer made with insulin harvested from slaughtered pigs. Scientists now insert strands of human DNA into bacteria in order to manufacture artificial insulin that is genetically identical to human insulin. The insulin must still be injected into the patient several times a day, so it is a poor second best to replacing the patients damaged pancreas. However, the genetically manufactured insulin is superior to the pig insulin. Cancer treating drugs, such as those that boost red blood cell production during chemotherapy, are also manufactured using recombinant DNA.

The field of regenerative medicine promises to become the endpoint of this long history of medical research. Regenerative medicine applies tissue engineering, stem cell therapy, medical devices and other techniques in order to repair damaged or diseased tissues and organs. Stem cell research allows us to understand the process of human biology at a cellular level, and is therefore one way that researchers hope to learn how to repair or replace human organs and tissues. New cells can be created either through the transformation of one type of specialized cell into another or through the growth of specialized cells out of undifferentiated stem cell lines. The creation of new human organs and tissues, if successful, would mean that seriously ill Americans could be treated with therapies that completely cure their conditions rather than merely treat their symptoms. It is likely that, as with other medical advances over the centuries, there will still be a minority of Americans who react to these advances out of fear or by making claims that medical researchers are playing God. However, just as was the case with blood transfusions, organ transplantation and recombinant DNA, the majority of Americans fully support these medical advances that have the potential to so greatly improve the quality of life for themselves and their loved ones.

What are stem cells?

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can generate healthy new cells, tissues, and organs. They are the master cells of the human body that can transform themselves into more specialized cells, that in turn perform a specific bodily function such as making the heart beat or secreting a particular hormone. In a human embryo, stem cells form four or five days after fertilization of the egg, and they are the precursor of all of the other cell types that will later be necessary for human development. After birth, stem cells remain in some of our organs, continuing to create specialized cells to replace cells that are damaged or wear out.

A stem cell line is comprised of a group of stem cells that are isolated from either an early stage embryo called a blastocyst or from adult tissue. These stem cells are then placed into a growth culture in a petri dish and induced to self-replicate, generating a colony of cells that continually replaces itself. Researchers then begin the hard work of learning what factors cause the stem cells to transform into one type of cell versus another. Although a relatively new area of scientific inquiry, the study of stem cells has already greatly increased our understanding of human cell biology.

What is involved in stem cell research?

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Wisconsin Stem Cell Now Stem Cells in Wisconsin