Stem Cell therapy could be a cure for cancer. Stem cell therapy ensures that cells lost due to chemotherapy can be regenerated faster and so increased doses of chemotherapy can be administered to cancer patients. These patients can therefore have a better chance of getting rid of all cancer cells and allow for them to recover faster.
Stem cells are cells that are unspecialised, that can divide and that are able to differentiate into a specialised cell or tissue with a specific function (KUUN, L. and NORTJIE, S). The source National Cancer Institute (2015) defines cancer as the name given to a collection of related diseases, where the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and can spread into surrounding tissues. Cancer can start almost anywhere in the human body. Normally, human cells grow and divide to form new cells as the body needs them. When cells grow old or get damaged, they die, and new cells take their place. However, when cancer develops, this orderly process does not function efficiently. As cells become abnormal, old or damaged cells survive when they
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New tissues are generated and supplied to the body. However, patients could experience long term problems. Problems depend on many factors, such as the type of transplant done, the conditioning treatment used, the patient’s overall health and the patient’s age when the transplant was done. Possible long-term risks of transplant include: organ damage, relapse (the cancer comes back), secondary (new cancers), abnormal growth of lymph tissues, infertility (the inability to produce children), hormone changes, such as changes in the thyroid or pituitary gland and cataracts (clouding of the lens of the eye, which causes vision loss) The medicines used in therapies can harm the body’s organs, such as the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, bones or joints, and nervous