• Question: can you use stem cells on every part of your body? including internally?

    Asked by hetty to Alex, Claire, Kate, Marcus, Neil on 17 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Marcus Johns

      Marcus Johns answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Stem cell therapies are meant to be used internally! The idea with stem cells is that they can grow into any type of cell that they want – bone, nerve, muscle, etc. – so can be injected into you at a specific point or grown on a scaffold that then gets put into you via surgery. The idea is that they then grow into the cells that are present at the site of the injury and help heal it.

      There’s been controversy around using stem cells in helping heal people because it’s believed by the general public that stem cells only come from embryos, which then raises ethical issues. However, this isn’t completely true. Whilst embryos are a good source of stem cells, they can also be found in all of us ‘grown’ humans. These cells can’t turn into absolutely every possible cell type but if we take the cells from a certain organ or tissue type they can generally grow into the cells found there.

      Ideally, we’ll one day be able to take cells from a person that has an injury, increase their number in a lab and then put them back in the same person to heal the injury. This also makes sure that the person won’t reject the cells – a major problem with current organ donations – as they’ll be from their body.

    • Photo: Claire Brockett

      Claire Brockett answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Great question hetty & think Marcus has answered it really well!

    • Photo: Alex Lyness

      Alex Lyness answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hey hetty,

      Stem cells can only be injected or delivered internally as they need to be in a nice warm place (37 degrees) with oxygen, food and water in order to stay alive. Currently there is research all over the world to help people hear again, repair eyesight, restore muscle functions, reboot immune systems and many more applications.

      Marcus has mentioned the ethics which is important to consider when doing science. Fortunately some clever research groups in Japan have managed to to create IPS cells, which stands for ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’. This was a really cool development as it turns out you can turn adult stem cells into almost any time of cell in the body, without needing embryonic stem cells.

      I think we’ll all be hearing a lot more about stem cells over the next 10 years as treatments get through clinical trials and are shown to be better than traditional medicines.

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