Personalized Stem Cells, A Reality Now

With stem cell research reaching new heights day by day, the recent and one of the widely welcomed piece of news which is flashing in our faces is, the fact that the day of having user specific, personalized, stem cells is no more a distant dream.

Infact, scientists from the Harvard and Columbia Universities, just proved in their research that the dream is soon going to become a reality, with the possibility of manufacturing person and disease specific, embryonic like stem cells, using adult human cells now been achieved.

The researchers reached the fete by creating disease specific individualized stem cells using adult human cells from the skin of two patients suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. These were later morphed into the replacement motor neurons by reprogramming them.

The disease- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a serious ailment involving a constant degeneration of the motor neurons of the sufferer, often to such great magnitude that it results in the loss of signal transmissions from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body, resulting in paralysis in acute cases.

The reprogramming and morphing of the skin cells obtained from the patients suffering from ALS, resulting in the creation of new motor neurons for replacement, marks the beginning of a totally new era of personalized stem cell research, specific to both the patient and his ailment, thus being more focused in the treatment and its approach.

"It opens doors to making patient-specific stem cell lines," said Dr. Kevin Eggan, principle faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and lead author of a study that was released today in the journal Science. "You can use these cells to make the actual cell type for that person's disease."

The limitations - Despite having a great potential in medical science, personalized stem cells have their own limitations. There is still time before this study can be practically applied to clinical treatment of diseases suffered by humans as, the process of creating personalized stem cells, uses the induced pluripotent stem cells technique also called the iPS technique.

The iPS technique, where on one hand helps create immunologically matched cells from the individual’s own body, to treat its own defects, it on the other hand, uses retroviral cells to do so, which ironically result in the production of cancerdefine cells in the body as pointed out by Dr. Curt Freed, professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Thus, despite it being a promising research with great results, it can not be used for treating ailments till the time iPS derived stem cells are being used.

About stem cells – stem cells are the amazing cell banks of the body which have the ability to develop into more than one type of body cells. Thus, playing an important role in the repair system of the body these cells can divide any number of times to become either stem cells or any other specialized cells like RBCs, neurons or muscle cells and help in fighting rare diseases.