Current uses of Stem Cell

Current uses of Stem Cell

It have many many uses in world....It has many uses in every health problem...........
Every people looking it for sick's remedy

Brain Damage

Stroke and traumatic brain injury lead to cell death, characterized by a loss of neurons and oligodendrocytes within the brain. Healthy adult brains contain neural stem cells, these divide and act to maintain general stem cell numbers or become progenitor cells.
In healthy adult animals, progenitor cells migrate within the brain and function primarily to maintain neuron populations for olfaction (the sense of smell). Interestingly, in pregnancy and after injury, this system appears to be regulated by growth factors and can increase the rate at which new brain matter is formed.

In the case of brain injury, although the reparative process appears to initiate, substantial recovery is rarely observed in adults, suggesting a lack of robustness.
Recently, results from research conducted in rats subjected to stroke, suggested that administration of drugs to increase the stem cell division rate and direct the survival and differentiation of newly formed cells could be successful. In the study referenced below, biological drugs were administered after stroke to activate two key steps in the reparative process.
Findings from this study seem to support a new strategy for the treatment of stroke using a simple elegant approach, aimed at directing recovery from stroke by potentially protecting and/or regenerating new tissue. The authors found that, within weeks, recovery of brain structure is accompanied by recovery of lost limb function suggesting the potential for development of a new class of stroke therapy or brain injury therapy in humans.

Cancer

Research injecting neural (adult) stem cells into the brains of dogs has shown to be be very successful in treating cancerous tumors. With traditional techniques brain cancer is almost impossible to treat because it spreads so rapidly. Researchers at the Harvard Medical School induced intracranial tumours in rodents.
Then, they injected human neural stem cells. Within days the cells had migrated into the cancerous area and produced cytosine deaminase, an enzyme that converts a non-toxic pro-drug into a chemotheraputic agent. As a result, the injected substance was able to reduce tumor mass by 81 percent. The stem cells neither differentiated nor turned tumorigenic.
Some researchers believe that the key to finding a cure for cancer is to inhibit cancer stem cells, where the cancer tumor originates. Currently, cancer treatments are designed to kill all cancer cells, but through this method, researchers would be able to develop drugs to specifically target these stem cells.