NIH Institutes and Centers Answers to the Question: “What would you hope to achieve from human pluripotent stem cell research?
Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to divide without limit and give rise to many specialized cells in an organism. There are several reasons why human pluripotent stem cells may be important to cancer research and reducing the cancer burden. First, pluripotent stem cells may be used to treat the tissue toxicity brought on by cancer therapy. Bone marrow and peripheral blood multipotent stem cells (which are more committed stem cells) are used already to restore patients’ hematopoietic and immune systems after high dose chemotherapy. However, pluripotent stem cells may have greater potential for returning the complete repertoire of immune response to patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation, thus contributing to the development of other treatments such as immune/vaccine therapy. Other tissues damaged by cancer therapy also may benefit by replenishing their stem cell pools, e.g., injection of pluripotent stem cells into the heart may permanently reverse cardiomyopathy caused b
