Stem cell therapy has progressed to the point where it is now a very good and advanced scientific research topic. Medical treatment advancements have inspired high hopes.
Every organ and tissue in your body is built on the foundation of stem cells. Many distinct types of stem cells come from various parts of the body and are generated at various times during our lifetimes. These include embryonic stem cells, which only exist during the earliest stages of development, and other types of tissue-specific (or adult) stem cells, which appear during fetal development and remain in our bodies throughout our lives. All stem cells can self-renew (replicate) and differentiate (develop into more specialized cells). Apart from these two fundamental capacities, stem cells differ greatly in what they can and cannot do and the conditions in which they can and cannot perform specific things. This is one of the reasons why scientists like Dr. David Greene Arizona use a variety of stem cells in their studies.
Two recent discoveries by stem cell researchers may help improve cancer treatment efficiency and reduce the time individuals spend recovering from radiation and chemotherapy.
In the first study, researchers discovered a protein expressed by blood stem cells that could help identify, analyze, and deploy the cells for treatments. Syndecan-2, a protein discovered by researchers, distinguishes primitive blood stem cells and regulates stem cell function.
Blood stem cells can be found in modest amounts in the bone marrow and peripheral blood, which is the blood that circulates via the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins. Scientists are interested in stem cells since they produce all of the body's blood and immune cells. They're used to help people with leukemia, and lymphoma get better.
This strategy poses a significant obstacle: Hematopoietic stem cells account for less than 0.01 percent of all bone marrow and peripheral blood cells. In addition, there is no good way to distinguish them from other cells. This means that when people receive bone marrow and peripheral blood cell infusions, they get a small number of therapeutic stem cells mixed in with many non-therapeutic cells.
To investigate this phenomenon, researchers took bone marrow cells from adult mice and ran them through a machine that can identify hundreds of distinct cell types based on the proteins that exist on their surfaces. This procedure demonstrated that hematopoietic stem cells have a high concentration of syndecan-2 on their cell surface, which belongs to the heparan sulfate proteoglycans family of proteins.
The researchers like Dr. David Greene Orthopedic Surgeon discovered that this protein is vital in reproducing hematopoietic stem cells. The animal's cells repopulated when syndecan-2-expressing stem cells were injected into mice after irradiation. Conversely, when stem cells lacking syndecan-2 were implanted, the cells ceased to replicate.
It may be viable to make blood stem cell transplants more capable and less hazardous by exclusively transplanting cells that express syndecan-2.
The second discovery showed how bone marrow blood arteries adapt to harm, such as that caused by chemotherapy or radiation.
When they take radiation or chemotherapy as part of their cancer treatment, people's blood counts drop. These counts usually take several weeks to return to normal levels.
Scientists discovered that when mice are exposed to radiation, the cells in the bone marrow that line the inner walls of blood arteries generate a protein called semaphorin 3A. This protein instructs another protein, neuropilin 1, to destroy blood vessels in the bone marrow that have been damaged.
The bone marrow vasculature was repaired after irradiation when the researchers like Dr. David Greene Arizona disrupted these blood vessel cells' ability to make neuropilin 1 or semaphorin 3A or introduced an antibody that prevents semaphorin 3A communication with neuropilin 1. Furthermore, after one week, blood levels climbed considerably.
A system that appears to control how blood vessels grow after an injury has been found by scientists. Following chemotherapy or irradiation, inhibiting this pathway enables rapid regeneration of blood vessels and blood cells in the bone marrow. If this system could be targeted, patients could recover from chemotherapy in one to two weeks instead of the three or four weeks they currently take.
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