Researches for Treatment of

Diseases using Stem Cells

• Many diseases are caused by a problem of certain cell type.
• As stem cells are responsible for the development of these cells,
they are the target of disease treatment.
• Potential uses of stem cells for treatment of diseases include
Parkinson’s, Alzehimer’s, bone marrow transplantation, diabetes,
and many other diseases.
Treatment of Diabetes
• In type-I Diabetes, the individual’s immune system attacks pancreas
cell that produce insulin.
• One way to treat this disease is to kill the immune cells with radiation
and chemotherapy, and then provide adult stem cells that produce
healthy stem cells.
Treatment of
Parkinson’s
disease
• Stem cells can also treat
neurological diseases, such as
Parkinson’s disease.
• In Parkinson's disease, nerve
cells that make dopamine stop
functioning, and the person
loses the ability to move
properly and might develop
mental impairments.
• This disease can be treated by
treating the stem cells
responsible for the production
of nerve cell.
Treatment of sickle cell disease
• Bone marrow is the spongy tissue inside some of your
bones, and contains the blood stem cells that produce
RBCs, WBCs, or platelets.
• When the bone marrow is defected, the stem cells
inside of it become defected too, which therefore
causes the RBCs produced to sickle.
• To treat this disease, a bone marrow transplant is
performed, which involves transplanting of the
multipotent hematopoietic stem cells.
The stem cell
debate
• To treat most of the diseases mentioned,
it would be easier to work with embryotic
stem cells than adult cells, as they are
easier to obtain and can become any type
of specialized cells.
• But adult cells can be obtained from
humans without harming them, while
pluripotent (embryotic) stem cells is
obtained from removing the inner mass
of an embryo and therefore killing the
human embryo.
• This has caused a big religious and ethical
debate, whether it is ok to kill the
embryos.