What is stem cell research??

Question

What is stem cell research??

Answer 1

when given the proper factors, stem cells can gibe rise to different kinds of the cells for the body -

so, if you have a major health problem which prevents you from growing a certain kind of a cell, it can be possible to generate the needed cells by inducing your stem cells.

so, stem cell research is the process by which these cells are studied.  there is much controversy surrounded stem cells because the best kinds of stem cells are obtained from abortions (called embryonic stem cells)

Opponents of the research argue that embryonic stem cell technologies are a slippery slope to reproductive cloning and can fundamentally devalue human life. Those in the pro-life movement argue that a human embryo is a human life and is therefore entitled to protection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_r...

Answer 2

A stem cell is human cell right>?????and can be found in bone marrow or blood vessel's and can b divided into more cells

Answer 3

The person above me trying to clear this up did not do a very good job of doing so, so let me try. When cells divide, they do not always generate two exact same daughter cells. Small changes can be made, in gene expression and/or cell shape, and in time this can produce very different types of cells. This process is called differentiation, and is the reason we have so many different cells in our body. When a cell is fully differentiated it doesn't divide anymore, but stay as it is until it dies. But not all cells become fully differentiated. Stem cells is a general word for cells that can renew themselves and produce one or several types of different cells. They can either be unipotent (produce only one type of cell), multipotent (produce several types of cells), pluripotent (produce almost all types of cells) or totipotent (produce all types of cells). A grown adult contains the first two, and perhaps three types of stem cells, and we need them to replace dead cells as we grow and time goes by. These types of stem cells are logically enough called adult stem cells.

The stem cells researchers are most interested in are totipotent cells, most commonly called embryonic stem cells (ESC). They are NOT taken from aborted featues, NOT from the placenta or umbilical cord, or any other part you can get from a developed embryo. ESC (as we know today) can ONLY be found in blastocysts, a small round ball of cells in the very early stages of development (as in the first week of development). They are taken from embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, in other words embryos that have been grown in a petri dish and never inside an uterus. When you do in vitro fertilization doctors always fertilize more eggs than they need, just in case something goes wrong. These left over embryos are then put in a freezer, never to be used again. These are the embryos researchers want to use for embryonic stem cell research. NOT aborted fetuses.

But to answer your actual question, stem cell research is the research involving any types of the stem cells mentioned above. The goal is to make these cells divide into the cell type you want, in the hope of using them as a treatment for all types of diseases. These can range from growing new organs for organ transplant, or growing new cells to replace the dying ones in diseases like MS or Alzheimer's. ESC is of most interest because they can develop into any type of cells, and therefore have tremendous capacity. But adult stem cells would also be very useful. If you could take cells from yourself, make them differentiate and then put them back in, they would not rejected as foreign like cells from another person would.

This has not proven to be as easy as it first seemed. In our bodies, cells differentiate when put into the right environment, but to control this in a lab environment has proven to be very hard. You can make cells differentiate, but not always to what you want, or at a very good successrate. But it certainly is a very exciting field of research, and hopefully it can give us a treatment for many diseases in the future.  

Answer 4

Basically stem cell research is the study of the application of stem cells to a human that may have for instance a damaged part of the body that is uncorrectable by medicine.

Here's a little back round information to bring this into perspective for you.  You see when we are all within the stages of pre-birth our cells are not yet defined to what they are going to be.  For instance a heart cell does not know its going to be a heart cell untill later development.  So scientists call these undecided cells stem cells.

Now you may/ should know that some cells in the body are not replaceable, so once damaged it can not be recovered (for instance your eye again).

So the thinking behind stem cell research is that you could take these undecided cells from a developing infant in the stages of pre-birth and apply them to a part of the body such as a wounded eye and they will become new eye cells... possibly even restoring someones vision...Amazing!

Yet their is a lot of controversy around this subject after all, you do need a fetus(baby in the pre-stages of birth) to provide these special cells.  So this research has been embraced by some biologists and shunned by others.

Hope this helps. :-)

Answer 5

Stem Cell research is where scientists research genetics and solving problems like genetic disorders mental problems and the like by studying fertilized egg cells.  I hope that helps.

Answer 6

stem cell research is the study of the possible application of "stem cells", or cells that have the genetic potential to become anything from bone to muscle to blood cells, towards medical purposes. The potential of stem cells includes ease in blood or muscle transplants, regrowing bones or even organs, and curing various illnesses such as leukemia more safely.

Using stem cells to transplant blood into a patient, for example, would reduce the risk of rejection by the host body.

Stem cell research, in fact, has almost immeasurable potential for advances in the medical community, and could very well hold the key to cures for many currently-incurable diseases.

What I would like to add/correct to the other people's answers is that Stem cell research does not have to use human embryos...indeed stem cells can also be found in the placenta, which is thrown away after a child's birth, in baby teeth (which don't appear until a child is much older than an embryo), and in bone marrow.

However, opponents of the research tend to latch on to the word "embryo", and there starts the whole "sanctity of human life" debate. These "pro-lifers" argue that an embryo has just as much right tolive as a full grown adult. Supporters of embryonic stem cell research either take the stance that an embryo is not yet capable of life, or otherwise point out the potential of other kinds of stem cells that don't involve embryos. There is also the fact that embryonic stem cells (ESC) has only involved embryos that have been slated for destruction anyway. This means that ESC has and would only use fetuses that were discarded from abortions, or were already used in other scientific experiments.

Just to be clear, I am not condoning ESC, as there may be other factors that I do not know about. I'm simply saying that it is foolish to see the word "fetus" or "embryo" and instantly jump to human life and the abortion debate. If one has problems with abortion, one should fight them, not the stem cellers who only use the discards of abortions, if at all.

The reason stem cells are found in embryos in the first place is that when a fetus is growing in the womb, all its muscles and bones and blood and stuff are being grown as well, which creates the need for stem cells. Just to clear the connection between embryos and stem cells up. But this does NOT mean that the two always have to be connected. Like I said, there are stem cells in bone marrow and the placenta and in baby teeth too.