Scientists have made a breakthrough progress with a new way of mass growing stem cells. The emergent research on stem cells it has been fueled by exciting applications in various fields of medicine, including regeneration of body's cells, tissues and organs, and producing replacement tissues and organs for humans.
A new growing substrate for stem cells was created by researchers at the University of Nottingham, England. According to their study published in Advanced Materials journal, this new procedure allows human stem cells to grow in far larger numbers than ever before. It can be the solution that will pave the way for further creating the "stem cells factories" of the future.
There are many potential applications in medicine for stem cell therapies. For instance, during a heart attack, are dying roughly 5 billion cells. Billions more stem cells more than that would be necessary for doctors in order to replace those dying cells.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham were able to create a substrate that can serve as the basis for the "stem cell factories" of the future. With this procedure it became possible to produce billions of stem cells at a time. These cells can serve as future "off-the-shelf" products to treat brain, liver, and heart conditions.
Clinical trials were performed in order to research possible applications for regenerative medicine based on stem cells, according to Morgan Alexander, University of Nottingham's professor of biomedical surfaces. He explained in a press release that the new growing substrate for stem cells recently developed by researchers is paving the way for manufacturing stem cells in large numbers. As soon as the clinical trials will prove regenerative medicine therapies to effective and safe, we can expect them to make their way to mainstream medicine.
Another professor of steam cell biology at the University of Nottingham, Chris Denning, explained that doctors would need at least 10 to 15 billion stem cells in order to replace the 5 billion cells dying when a person has a heart attack. The reason for this extra number needed is the fact that not all of them will survive or be able to grow into heart cells. He added that if we take into consideration only the 70,000 people having a heart attack each year in the U.K., we come of numbers in the order of trillions of stem cells necessary to be produced and made available to doctors.
The synthetic substrate developed by the researchers at the University of Nottingham is a cost-effective solution that can allow scientists to grow tens of billions of stem cells at a time. The synthetic substrate is made of an organism-specific surface that supports its growth. The resulted substrate can survive long-term storage and it can be used with common cells culture-ware.
Up to date in some countries eye disorder patients have already receive stem cell derived treatments. Other possible uses of stem cell therapies, such as for the brain, liver, and heart, are still in the research or clinical trial process. In the last five years, the field of regenerative medicine has been growing exponentially and it experts are expecting that over the coming five years a lot more patients will be able to benefit from receiving new stem cell treatments.
