Amazing VIDEO..The Healing Power of your Own Stem Cells explained by a Doctor

Indeed, as discoveries seems to outmaneuver controversy, Stem Cells and their enormous potential for use in clinical therapy, are the focus of much interest and debate. However, stem cell facts and history,including the medical jargon and the dissemination of scientific information to the general public can be quite confusing and rather overwhelming for the uninitiated.

If you have had the need to seek out more stem cell facts or stem cell therapy options, then the chances are that you may already have familiarized yourself with certain terminologies in the field. What follows is a synopsis of pertinent stem cell facts, concepts, procedures and terminologies that should simplify matters, inform you further, and empower your effective decision-making.

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells. Pluri– or totipotent stem cells have the potential, given the required microenvironment, to develop from a progenitor or parent cell into each cell type of the human body. When stem cells are referred to as being multipotent then their developmental capacity is a bit more limited and they have an ability to differentiate into many, but not all, cell types (thus multi lineages). Stem cells are capable of dividing and renewing themselves infinitely, acting as a regeneration and maintenance system.

The potency of stem cells makes them key to developing new regenerative and transplant cures.

The term adult stem cell is used for any stem cell derived from the postnatal animal (especially the human) to differentiate it from embryonic stem cells. Use of, and research on human embryonic stem cells is controversial, with debate focusing on moral and ethical concerns. Adult stem cells are typically sourced from bone marrow, fat, umbilical cord and placenta.

1. Embryo Embryonic stem cells are a population of self-renewing, pluripotent cells that are derived from the inner cell mass of mammalian embryos at the blastocyst stage (3 - 4 days after conception). These cells are the most versatile of the stem cell group, having the ability to transform or differentiate into any cell in the human body. Differentiation is dependent on micro-environmental cues. Development, broadly speaking, follows a haematopoeitic (blood) or a non-haematopoeitic lineage.

The moral and ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryonic stem cells have frustrated efforts for medical advancement. Scientists have proposed a new and less controversial source of embryonic stem cells; human eggs discarded in fertility treatments - up to 1/3 of eggs used during in vitro fertilisation are found to be unusable and consequently discarded.

2. Umbilical Cord and Placenta Stromal cells isolated from the human umbilical cord mesenchymal tissue, namely Wharton's jelly, have been shown to exhibit stem cell potency. Since umbilical cord is a postnatal organ discarded after birth, the collection of cells does not require an invasive procedure with ethical concerns. Placentas also, are typically thrown away by hospitals and are a source of mesenchymal stems cells.

Mesenchymal stromal cells of foetus-derived tissue possess multipotent properties between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. They can be successfully differentiated into mature adipocytes, osteoblasts, chondrocytes, skeletal myocytes, cardiomyocytes, neurons and endothelial cells. More on mesenchymal cells later!

3. Bone marrow Bone marrow, particularly of the long bones, is the source of haematopoetic stem cells that have been used for the past several years in transplants. There are no ethical issues regarding their use, but the method for accessing them is invasive.

1. Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) Mesenchymal cells are considered to be multipotent adult progenitor cells that possess stem cell features. They have a considerable capacity for self-renewal while maintaining their multipotency.

These stem cells can differentiate into a range of different cell types (related tissue types are in brackets) associated with the musculoskeletal system such as osteoblasts (bone), chondrocytes (cartilage), adipocytes (fat), myocytes (muscle), myofibroblasts (tendon and ligament). Their ability to give rise to cells of non-musculoskeletal tissue such as brain or liver or pancreatic islets cells has been reported.

Given this potential, mesenchymal stem cells make excellent candidates for use in treating a range of tissues affected by disease or damage; tissue remodeling depends on mesenchymal cells. As previously mentioned, these cells can be derived from Wharton's jelly present in the umbilical cord.

Allogeneic transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells between different individuals may also be possible as these cells appear to be immune privileged in that they are not necessarily rejected when implanted into unmatched recipients.

2. CD34 + cells These are haematopoietic stem cells, found in umbilical cord and bone marrow, with cell surface markers specific for CD34. The CD 34 molecule functions in cell-to-cell adhesion (CD is an abbreviation for: cluster of differentiation). CD34+ cells may be useful in several areas of clinical stem cell transplantation, including stem cell expansion and haematopoietic recovery. As a matter of clinical distinction, mesenchymal cells are CD34 negative.

This novel kind of therapy has as its basic tenet that stem cells recruited to sites of injury are involved in tissue repair, regeneration, and remodelling. Stem cells are isolated from cord blood or other, cultured in a laboratory and then therapeutically applied to ameliorate degenerative diseases, and serious injury in patients.

The hope is that human stem cells can be used to heal patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, liver disease, multiple sclerosis and other chronic diseases.

What Does Cell Culture Entail? An essential prerequisite to the successful development of stem cell-based therapies is the development of techniques to propagate pure populations of stem cells on a large scale.

Mesenchymal stem cells are very rare, existing at an estimated frequency of about 1 in 100,000 bone marrow cells(1). To obtain sufficient numbers, cells are encouraged to multiply indefinitely in the laboratory. Briefly, the process entails isolating cells from a source such as umbilical cord and growing them up in a cell culture facility whereby the multipotency of the cells is expanded over several population doublings.

Mesenchymal cells are traditionally grown on a fibroblast feeder layer that provides them with the necessary chemical signals to remain undifferentiated and to continue dividing over and over. After expansion these cells retain their ability to differentiate into a variety of mature cell types.

It had been thought previously that stem cells are directly influenced by cells in the local environment or ‘niche’, but Canadian researchers have recently (July 2007) published groundbreaking findings in the prestigious journal Nature that human embryonic stem cells can actually produce distinctive niche cells in vitro, which then release stem cell nourishing proteins to help keep their ‘parents’ ticking over.

Researchers understandably are interested in the relationship between stem cells and their niche, because the niche represents a route for modifying stem cell behavior. If human stem cells can be reliably guided down a particular pathway, then they can be more readily used for future clinical therapy to regenerate damaged tissue such as neurons for Parkinson’s disease, or insulin producing cells for diabetes.

Expansion Expansion refers to the proliferation capacity and the cell population doublings during a particular culture period. Undifferentiated Embryonic Stem cells have the potential for unlimited expansion in culture with retention of an ability to generate cells of all three germ layers - endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. The early germ layer cells can then further differentiate into many specific cell lineages.

Umbilical cord blood (and adipose tissue) are attractive alternatives to bone marrow in isolating mesenchymal cells. Cord blood MSCs particularly seems to be expandable to higher numbers, meaning they can be cultured longest with the highest proliferation capacity(2). Optimised culture conditions resulted in more than 50 population doublings of umbilical cord mesenchymal cells after 15 weeks. Importantly, a clinical quantity of 100 million mesenchymal stromal cells with retained differentiation potential could be obtained from umbilical cord MSCs within approximately 7 weeks (3).

Cryopreservation After the clinically desired numbers of cells are cultured, standard cryogenic protocols are used for stem cell storage. During storage, it is critically important that stem cells maintain their undifferentiated status.

Regenerative Medicine The essential aim of regenerative medicine is to obtain adequate specific cell types or tissue to restore the normal physiology of a part of the body damaged by injury or disease.

Matched tissue For bone marrow transplantation as treatment for certain haematological diseases, matched tissue is required. In the general population the odds of finding someone with matching stem cells is thought to be one in 100 000, while 25% of siblings have matching tissue types. Globally there is a shortfall of matched bone marrow, and this is propelling the research towards improving the engraftment of umbilical cord blood.

Autograft For transplantation, the ideal in ensuring graft compatibility is to be able to take cells from the individual requiring treatment. This may occur either directly or following a period of growth and differentiation in vitro.

Allograft There is a considerable risk of graft incompatibility and a very real chance of immunorejection when cells or tissue are transplanted from an allogeneic source – i.e. source of independent origin / other than the patient.

Rejection Reports that transplanted umbilical cord mesenchymal cells do not precipitate an immunorejection reaction (4) (and may in fact suppress ongoing immune cell induced reactions in humans) offer much promise to those folk who are exploring stem cell therapy of this nature.

References 1. www.stemcell.com 2. Kern et al. Stem Cells 2006, 24(5): 1294-301 3. Reinisch et al. Regenerative Medicine 2007, 2(4):371-382 4. Can & Karahuseyinoglu Stem Cells Aug, 2007 epub

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