Question: how did people find out about being able to make stem cells do want you want

Sharon Sneddon answered on 16 Mar 2011:

Hello,
Well, I think what you are trying to ask how did people find out about being able to make stem cells to do what we want , and the answer is by doing thousands and thousands of experiments on them. By doing lots of experiments, the scientists not only answer questions but they also end up creating more questions and the cycle continues. In embryonic stem cell biology, scientists knew that stem cells were important and they first discovered these things..

1978: Stem cells were discovered in human cord blood
1981: First in vitro stem cell line developed from mice
1988: Embryonic stem cell lines created from a hamster
1995: First embryonic stem cell line derived from a primate
1997: Cloned lamb from stem cells
1997: Leukaemia origin found as haematopoietic stem cell, indicating possible proof of cancer stem cells
1998: human stem cells isolated and grown.

So when we discovered the human stem cells, it was assumed that they would grow the same as the other embryonic stem cells but it was found that they didnt, so more experiments had to be carried out to get them to do what we want, it’s a lot like trial and error, we try one thing with the cells, for example, growing them in a certain chemical, if they die, then we know that we can’t use that again, so we will try something else.

I hope that answers your question, if not let me know and I’ll try and explain it better!