Stem Cells

Stem Cells

Stem Cell have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. 

In addition, in many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. 

When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

Stem cells are distinguished from other cell types by two important characteristics.

•First, they are unspecialized cells capable of renewing themselves through cell division, sometimes after long periods of inactivity.

• Second, under certain physiologic or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become tissue- or organ-specific cells with special functions. In some organs, such as the gut and bone marrow, stem cells regularly divide to repair and replace worn out or damaged tissues. In other organs, however, such as the pancreas and the heart, stem cells only divide under special conditions.

History.

•2006, Cells reprogrammed

Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan reveals a way of making embryonic-like cells from adult cells – avoiding the need to destroy an embryo. His team reprograms ordinary adult cells by inserting four key genes – forming "induced pluripotent stem cells".

•2007, Nobel prize

Evans shares the Nobel prize for medicine with Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies for work on genetics and embryonic stem cells.

•2010, Spinal injury

A person with spinal injury becomes the first to receive a medical treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells as part of a trial by Geron of Menlo Park, California, a pioneering company for human embryonic stem cell therapies.

•2012, Blindness treated

Human embryonic stem cells show medical promise in a treatment that eases blindness.

•2012, Another Nobel

Yamanaka wins a Nobel prize for creating induced pluripotent stem cells, which he shares with John Gurdon of the University of Cambridge.

•2013, Therapeutic cloning

Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton and his colleagues produce human embryonic stem cells from fetal cells using therapeutic cloning – the breakthrough falsely claimed in 2005.

•2014, Pre-embryonic state

Charles Vacanti of Harvard Medical School together with Haruko Obokata at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues announced a revolutionary discovery  In some organs, such as the gut and bone marrow, stem cells regularly divide to repair and replace worn out or damaged tissues. In other organs, however, such as the pancreas and the heart, stem cells only divide under special conditions.

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