Stem cells are becoming a hot topic when it comes to research for new medical treatments. This article attempts to give an idea about what they are and what they do.

Stem cells are the ‘building blocks’ cells of the body. They have the potential to develop into more specialized cells and create many different types of cell found in the body. They are capable of self-renewal by cell division, whilst still keeping their original, undifferentiated (non-specialized) state. These cells are capable of creating many different tissues of the body. They are found in bone marrow and in the blood circulating around your body. They are also found in the umbilical cord blood and placenta at birth, and collection and storage of umbilical cord blood for possible future medical treatments has become increasingly popular. The use of the cells derived from this umbilical cord blood has the great advantage of being a perfect match for the child which they originated from, and therefore there is no risk of an adverse reaction to them.

When it comes to developing new medical treatments, these cells offer the possibility of a cure for many of today’s incurable conditions. They are already used to treat conditions such as leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease and sickle cell disease.

Inside the body, these cells replenish other types of more specialized cell which have been killed or damaged. There are more than two hundred different cell types. They also replenish the cells found in the blood, the requirement for new blood cells being around 100,000,000,000 per day. They are found in greater numbers in embryos than in adults, and it is the embryonic stem cell type which can specialize and grow into any other type of cell. It is only this type which can be grown in significant quantities in the laboratory. Due to their source, the human embryo, the use of these has proved to be controversial. Adult (or Tissue) stem cells are more limited in which types of cell they can form and are usually limited to differentiating into the tissues in which they are found.

The potential to differentiate into different types of cell is called the ‘Potency’ of the cell. The different types of potency are:

Unipotent- Can only produce their own cell type, can self-renew

Oligopotent- Can only differentiate into a small number of cell types

Multipotent- Can differentiate only into closely-related types of cell

Pluripotent- Differentiate into most cell types

Totipotent (Omnipotent)- Can differentiate into any cell type

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