• Question: Can stem cells ever fail at healing something?

    Asked by tabbyboo to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 24 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 13 Mar 2011:

      Hi Tabbyboo.
      In answer to your question, yes. Stem cells are not perfect, and sometimes they don’t do what we expect, or don’t work as well as we like. Thats why we need to do lots more research on stem cells to make sure they are going to work like we expect and are safe to use in patients.

      Have you heard of a bone marrow transplant? Well that is a type of stem cell transplant, normally it is very sucessful and can cure people with leukaemia, but sometimes, they fail.
      Sadly medicine and science is not perfect, just like most things!

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Tabbyboo – yes stem cells can fail to heal things, they will never be the answer for everything. And even if they are capable of doing something doesn’t mean that they will work every time in every person. We also talk about things like ‘cancer’ as if it was one generic disease, which is really isn’t.

      I’m sorry that sounds very pessimistic!

      But I still think stem cells will be a really good technology and even if they only manage to help a few people it will be worth it. We must not forget as well that stem cells could be used to help find better conventional drugs to help people – so it may be that the biggest advances don’t come from stem cell therapies but from using stem cells to find better drugs.
      Watch this space!

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi Tabbyboo, good Q!
      Stem cells are really useful in what we call regenerative medicine. That is, being able to heal wounds or to regenerate damaged or injured body parts.. kind of like lizards which can regenerate their tails when it’s been cut off!
      But there are lots of diseases where they may not be useful, for example, if a person has defective DNA and has an abnormal heart or liver – stem cells may not be able to cure them of that because stem cells do not treat the underlying problem, which is with the DNA. But if you were to operate on the heart, then you could potentially use stem cells to help it heal better after the operation. so whilst stem cells may not be the answer to everything, they may be able to play a role in the treatment of many diseases.

    • Photo: Jayne Charnock

      Jayne Charnock answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      yup tabbyboo

      there is a really limited number of illnesses that have been successfully cured using stem cells, they include leukemia, some forms of blindness, and slowing of progressive neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinsons. apart from those, lots more work need to be done before we can begin to cure the number of diseases that we believe stem cells have the potential to, its just a case of working out how!

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