Ron: What is stem cell therapy? How far along is the science?
Dr. Jan Nolta: Ron, that's a type of question that we try to answer every day in my lab. How do stem cell therapies actually work? We have made some great advances in regenerative medicine, but we do still have ways to go. Stem cell therapies are being designed in labs like mine to target specific diseases in conditions. For example, in Peripheral artery disease where the circulation can be cut off a person's leg or using stem cells that will reopen an artery and restore blood slot to that lymph.
We've already tried it in animal models and it's proved successful. But this type of therapy is now in early clinical trails using adult's stem cells from the patients on bone marrow. So, bone marrow stem cells refers to use and therapy trails in 1956 and that was to restore the blood forming system, but now, they're being used for other tissue repair strategies, everything from heart attack to repairing bad knees. And these are all in really clinical trails right now.
But using embryonic stem cells, the nutrition can actually be re-grown in a dish for implantation in to the diseased area, or damaged organ or area. Now, we know there are labs are working daily to understand how to bring those particular stem cell therapies safely to the patient to meet them.
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