Stem cell therapy is the use of stem cells to prevent or treat a condition or disease.
Bone marrow transplant is a very popular and most widely used stem cell therapy, but certain therapies procured from umbilical cord blood are being used. Various researches are being conducted to develop different origins for stem cells, as well as to apply stem-cell treatments for neuro-degenerative conditions and diseases, heart disease, diabetes.

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With the capability of some excellent scientists to isolate and develop the embryonic stem cells, along with the scientists’ growing ability to develop stem cells with the help of somatic cell nuclear transfer and various techniques to develop pluripotent stem cells, controversies have arised both related to human cloning and abortion politics. The efforts to market the different treatments based on stored umbilical cord blood’s transplant have been problematic.

For over thirty years, bone marrow is being utilized for treating cancer patients with condition such as lymphoma and leukemia and is popular and widely practiced. During chemotherapy, the cytotoxic agents kill most of the growing cells. These agents are unable to discriminate between the neoplastic and leukemia cells and the hematopoietic stem cells which are present within the bone marrow. The stem cell transplant tries to reverse this side effect of convention chemotherapy strategies. Healthy bone marrow of the donor reintroduces the functional stem cells for replacing the cells lost in the body of the host during treatment. Transplanted cells initiate an immune response that helps in killing the cancer cells. This process can go extremely far but it tends to create a graft verses host disease , which is considered as the most severe side effect of the treatment.

Prochymal, another stem-cell therapy was accepted in Canada in the year 2012 for managing the serious graft vs host disease in kids who are unresponsive to the steroids. This is an allogenic stem therapy and is based on (MSCs) mesenchymal stem cells which are obtained from the bone marrow of the adult donors. The MSCs are purified with the help of marrow, packaged and cultured with up to ten thousand doses derived from just one donor. The doses are frozen and stored until required. The FDA has approved 5 hematopoietic stem-cell products obtained from umbilical cord blood, for the treatment of immunological and blood diseases
There is still plenty to learn about stem cells, however, and their current applications as treatments are many times exaggerated by some parties and the media who do not fully understand the science and limitations, and also by clinics who are only concerned about selling the treatment to various seriously injured or chronically ill patients.

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Here are some of the Vital Facts about the Stem Cell Therapy:

1) Currently, only some treatments have been proven effective and safe.

2) When you opt for an unproven treatment, there is always something to lose.

3) Various types of stem cells serve various purposes in the body.

4) The same stem cell treatment isn’t likely to work for different conditions or diseases.

5) The science behind a condition and the science behind the treatment should match.