This month, two forerunners in the world of stem cell research were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology. Shinya Yamanaka, from Japan, and John Gurdon, from the UK, received the prize for their work in changing adult cells into pluripotent stem cells, which have the potential to turn into any cell in the human body.
Whilst Professor Gurdon used cells from the gut of frogs to clone, them, Professor Yamanaka worked out how to alter genes in order to reprogram cells.
Professor Gurdon
When an egg becomes fertilized there is one type of cell present that multiples. The duplicated cells become specialized and form all of the tissues in an animal’s body. It was generally accepted that once a cell had specialized it could not alter its course so, for example, once a stem cell becomes a skin cell, it cannot multiply and change to become a liver cell.
Professor Gurdon believed that the genetic information haled in any cell is enough to create a whole new animal. In 1962 he demonstrated by taking a cell from the gut of a frog and placing its genetic information inside a frog egg. A normal tadpole developed. This discovery gave rise to Dolly the Sheep, the first ever cloned mammal.
The last decades have been filled with fantastical stories of cloning, growing human ears on mice and spare organs. But realistically, and morally, whilst the potential of stem cells was revealed through these studies, they were a long way from being transposed into modern medicine and used to treat serious diseases and conditions. Until Shinya Yamanaka came along.
Shinya Yamanaka
Rather than transferring genetic information from an animal or human to an egg, Professor Yamanaka recognized that the most advantageous way of treating medical conditions with genetics was to reset the information.
By adding four genes to normal skin cells, Professor Yamanaka was able to turn the skin cells into stem cells, with the ability to become specialized cells of any other body part.
The Future
Currently, stem cell therapy is used to treat a range of conditions, such as COPD, heart disease, joint conditions and neurodegenerative conditions. This is done by using donor stem cells or stem cells from the patient, which have been extracted from adipose (fat) tissue or bone marrow. Stem Cell transplants are used to regenerate dead or dying bone marrow of people with bone marrow diseases, malfunction syndromes, or those whose bone marrow has been destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation treatment for a solid cancer.
The technique discovered by Professor Yamanaka is thought to revolutionize the world of stem cell medicine as it will enable doctors to use a sample of skin cell tissue to create stem cells which can then be used, amongst other things, to repair damage done after a heart attack or stroke, or reverse the progress of degenerative neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and MS.
Professor Yamanaka’s goal in life was to “bring this stem cell technology to the bedside, to patients, to clinic”. Once researched further and approved, his discovery has the potential to be used on a routine basis throughout the world.
At Stem Cell Therapy Mexico we use stem cell technology to treat hundreds of patients a year, halting the progress of and reversing damage caused by otherwise untreatable conditions.
If you have COPD, MS, heart disease, have suffered a stroke or suffer from any one of the many conditions that we treat, don’t give up, and don’t learn to live with your condition. Stem cell therapy could help you to get your life back.
If you would like to know more about how stem cell therapy works, contact us today and we’ll make sure the right person calls you back.