What are the potential uses of human stem cells?
Stem cell research contributes to a fundamental understanding of how organisms develop and grow, and how tissues are maintained throughout adult life. This is knowledge that is required to work out what goes wrong during disease and injury and ultimately how these conditions might be treated. The development of a range of human tissue-specific and embryonic stem cell lines will provide researchers with the tools to model disease, test drugs and develop increasingly effective therapies.
Because stem cells are the source of all tissues of the body, scientists can learn how stem cells grow into different cell types in the body and help them better understand normal and abnormal development. Scientists need to understand cell renewal and differentiation in order to offer the possibility of a renewable replacement source to treat diseases. Many scientists see stem cell research as the beginning of the new era that will allow us to utilize everything that we have learned from the Human Genome Project. Stem cell research can lead to new insights about disease from studying the proteins that surround and organize the DNA in our cells. Examples of some genetic defects scientists are studying include: some cancers, ALS, infertility, Type 1 diabetes. The first potential application of human embryonic stem cell technology may be in the area of drug discovery. Stem cell technology could permit the rapid screening of hundreds of thousands of chemicals that must now be tested throu
Related Questions
- What are the potential uses of human stem cells and the obstacles that must be overcome before these potential uses will be realised?
- What are the potential uses of human stem cells and the obstacles that must be overcome before these potential uses will be realized?
- What are the potential uses of human stem cells?
