Archive for the 'Bone Marrow Transplantation' Category

Scientists and researchers are taking normal adult cells and converting them to adult stem cells also know as induced pluripotent stem cells. Kind of like biting the snake that bites you, cells that form scars in the heart after a heart attack can be reprogrammed to repair the damage caused by the heart attack.

These induced pluripotent stem cells once converted from regular somatic cells can be used to repair any kind of injury and because they come directly form the injured host it eliminates the risk of rejection. Anti-rejection drugs would no longer be necessary either.


Scientists are working on human somatic cells to make them pluripotent, essentially give them the same qualities of an embryonic stem cell. These induced pluripotent  cells have all the factors that characterize human embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent means these cells have the ability to become any of the three primary germ layers.
Some of the uses for this kind of cell would be study and development of new disease models, transplantation medicine applications and new drug development. One of the big challenges with and embryonic stem cell is trying to control the mutations because one of the true test for and embryonic stem cell is that if will produce a teratoma tumor when injected under the skin.