With stem cell therapy the use of several techniques to replace damaged or destroyed cells by disease with functioning cells is meant. Some diseases which can be helped or prevented by stem cell therapy include cancer, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and eye diseases.
History stem cell therapy
The history of stem cell began approximately during the 1850s when it was discovered that cells were basically the building blocks of life. Begin 1900s it was discovered that some cells had the ability to generate blood cells. In 1968 the first successful bone marrow transplant was carried out to treat two siblings with severe immunodeficiency. More key events in stem cell therapy include a cloned lamb from stem cells in 1997 and leukaemia origin found
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The three major types of therapy are:
• Adult stem cell transplants using bone marrow stem cells - This is also called bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This technique is used to restore cells that have before been destroyed by a lot of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. With the help of BMT and PBSCT (pheripheral blood stem cell transplantation) patients can now receive higher doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy for, for example, fighting cancer.
• Adult stem cell transplants using peripheral stem cells - PBSCT is the same as BMT, the only difference is that with BMT bone marrow cells are transplanted and with PBSCT peripheral blood stem cells. The peripheral stem cells are located in the blood and bone marrow cells in bones.
• Stem cell transplants using umbilical cord blood – An umbilical cord blood transplant uses blood that normally is thrown away which is left behind in the placenta and umbilical cord after birth. This blood is stored and frozen until later use.
• Therapeutic cloning – This therapy is often confused with cloning a new human being, but has nothing to do with reproductive cloning. With therapeutic cloning you are cloning an embryo to use it to grow new, healthy