Benefits of cell therapy

People who could benefit from stem cell therapies include, but are not limited to, those with spinal cord injuries, type 1 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, burns, cancer, and osteoarthritis.

Stem cells may have the ability to grow into new tissue for use in transplantation and regenerative medicine. Researchers continue to advance knowledge about stem cells and their applications in transplantation and regenerative medicine.

Evaluate the safety and efficacy of new drugs. Before new drugs are used in people, some types of stem cells are useful for testing the safety and quality of investigational drugs. It is very likely that this type of test will have a direct impact on the development of drugs for the analysis of cardiac toxicity.

One of the new areas of study is the efficacy of using human stem cells that have been programmed into tissue-specific cells to test new drugs. For testing of new drugs to be accurate, cells must be programmed to take on the properties of the type of cells to be tested. Techniques for programming cells into specific cells are still under study.

For example, neurons could be generated to test a new drug for neuropathy or nerve damage. The tests could show if the new drug had any effect on the cells and if the cells were damaged.