Are there different types of adult stem cells?
Yes,there are many types of adult stem cells. The most common is known as a hematopoetic stem cells (HSC-CD 34+). While these are easy to obtain from IV blood or bone marrow and are very plentiful, outside of a handful of cardiac and vascular applications, they are not well studied as being effective in treating a broad range of disease. Despite this, the vast majority of what you see being billed as “stem cells” (where the cells are injected the same day as collected from bone marrow or blood) are these less useful cells. The type of adult stem cell that is most often seen in research as being associated with tissue repair is a mesenchymal stem cell (MSC). MSC’s can’t generally be harvested from blood nor can they be obtained in clinically relevant numbers at the bedside, processed, and re injected in the same day. All of the high quality research involving MSC’s involves culture expansion. This means that the cells are grown in culture to higher numbers before being used for treatmen
