Kid receives stem cell transplant

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-05 08:59pm

A teenager received an infusion of stem cells into his damaged heart. Interesting.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... plant_dc_1

I'm not too sure how stem cells work in the overall body system, but from my specific neck of the woods I know stem cells have to overcome a lot of problems to grow back normally. Such as the all important problem of overcoming the scarring from the damaged tissue and the other all important problem is, are there the correct signaling cues still present? I'd be very interested to see how they got through these problems surgically.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-03-05 09:03pm

The technology is very experimental, there is no real reason why it won't work, but equally there is a doubt that it will work effectively yet anyway.

It's nice to see that some places in America haven't fallen for the anti-biotech fallacies and scrapped such research.

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-05 09:07pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:The technology is very experimental, there is no real reason why it won't work, but equally there is a doubt that it will work effectively yet anyway.

It's nice to see that some places in America haven't fallen for the anti-biotech fallacies and scrapped such research.

I think the problem that most people had about stem cell research was cloning embryos as a way of milking more stem cells.

But yes, stem cell research is fairly new, only 40 years old (that wasn't sarcasm btw). And the properties of stem cells are constantly being rewritten and reassessed. If you read the published articles, it's actually very funny. Because there's such a long gap between submission and publication, you see newer journal articles based off of evidence that people have just recently begun to suspect is wrong.

Kelly Antilles · Post by **Kelly Antilles** » 2003-03-05 09:07pm

My husband's uncle is receiving stem cells for his lukemea. You have to be an exact match to receive stem cells. The body will either accept or reject them. It's a pretty painful process. And concidering his uncle has been taking chemo too... which is even more painful. The good news is stem cell replacement therapy is actually pretty high in success.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-03-05 09:17pm

Kelly Antilles wrote:My husband's uncle is receiving stem cells for his lukemea. You have to be an exact match to receive stem cells. The body will either accept or reject them. It's a pretty painful process. And concidering his uncle has been taking chemo too... which is even more painful. The good news is stem cell replacement therapy is actually pretty high in success.

Fortunately, they are developing methods that enable the stem cells to utilise your own DNA thus giving them antigens from your body, this means that the immune system will identify these cells as friend and not foe and desist any attack.