Stem Cells: The Future

We are in a great place on stem cell investigation. At the present time, stem cell therapy is used to help in the healing of diseases like arthritis, cancer, Parkinson and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, stem cells are helpful to burn victims, helping them to regenerate damaged tissue. It’s noteworthy that stem cells also have esthetic uses. These therapies offer patients new ways to repair their body and improve their health.

To the medical industry, this is just the dawn of stem cell therapy. The potential uses of human stem cells are almost infinite, and the researches are moving forward faster than anyone thought. We are in the edge of a major stem cell breakthrough. The goal to achieve is provide effective low-cost treatments for patients with diabetes, heart diseases, spinal cord damage, and many other problems that nowadays are hard to heal.

On April, last year, Milken Institute offered a conference about the future of regenerative medicine. There, spokesmen discussed the full range of diseases that are being investigated to be treated with stem cells. They even spoke about genetically modifying hematopoietic or blood-forming stem cells to cure HIV/AIDS. This goal is a proof of possibilities that medical industry sees in stem cell therapy.

There is a lot of new information that shows the advances in stem cell area. Below is just a taste of what is to come.

Nervous System

The nervous system is really complex. Scientists are yet discovering how it works and understanding its functions. What they know is that the loss of cells in this system have catastrophic results on brain activity, giving as a result diseases like Alzheimer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, etc. Sufferings that affect life quality in a big way.

Researchers have found that stem cells can prevent and repair damage in the brain, in the future this treatment will help to re-grow nerves that have been lost. They’re working now in finding a way to use the own brain cells (neural stem cells) to improve repairing and reduce regeneration of the cells.

Heart Diseases

In the last 10 years, the progress in this area has been unprecedented. Yet, cardiovascular disease is the first cause of death in United States. Hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure are struggles that American society faces every day.  Stem cell therapy has been investigated as a possible solution for all these sufferings.

There have been studies in patients who are undergoing open-heart surgery. The studies proved that stem cells injected into the circulation or directly into the heart tissue have improved their cardiac function and induce the formation of new capillaries. Although more research is necessary, these preliminary results show how stem cells can be used to repair damaged heart tissue in the future. Can you imagine a world where the first cause of death can be healed?

Diabetes

Let’s talk about diabetes. With this disease, the body doesn’t produce insulin, and your body needs the insulin to convert sugar, starches and other foods into energy for daily life. This is a chronic condition hard to manage and can affect everybody, from children to adults.

Well, stem cells hold a gigantic potential as a source of insulin-producing cells; that’s because stem cells can become virtually any kind of cell. Ongoing studies are aimed at establishing that stem cells can be used to heal diabetes. This means that the cure to this disease could be available within your life-time. There has been several experiments where stem cells, specially combined with sitagliptin (medicine to treat diabetes), and the results have shown that diabetes was reduced and treatment even reserve the disease.

Autoimmune System

Your immune system protects your body from diseases and infections; but if you have an autoimmune disease (like autoimmune hepatitis or lupus), your immune system attacks your body by mistake. Diseases of this system are some of the hardest to treat, but recent research has found impressive results.

FACT: HALT-MS, a clinical trial where there is studying the use of stem cells made a study where 24 volunteers went under stem cell transplants between 2006 and 2010 to treat multiple sclerosis. Researchers found that more than 86 percent of the volunteers remained relapse free after three years, and 91 percent showed no sign of disease progression.

This was possible by erasing the immune system of the patients and giving them a new through stem cells therapy. The researchers also found that by replacing the immune system, the new one wouldn’t see nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord as a threat; the result of this experiment is a real proof of stem cell therapy capacity.

The future looks good to the healthcare and life improvement. At this pace, we’ll be able to heal some of the the most difficult diseases within some years from now. Stem cell therapy is a reality and the industry is working hard to explore its maximum capacity as soon as possible. If you think that you won’t be able to receive this kind of therapy, you better think twice. At the end of this year, stem cells therapy will be arriving to Los Algodones, Baja California. Stay tuned, because the future looks promising, and the future is now.