How the building blocks of the body will revolutionise medicine
Imagine being able to reverse blindness, cure multiple sclerosis (MS), or rebuild your heart muscles after a heart attack. For the past few decades, research into stem cells, the building blocks of tissues and organs, has raised the prospect of medical advances of this kind –yet it has produced relatively few approved treatments. But that could be about to change, says Robin Ali, professor of human molecular genetics of King’s College London. “Just as gene therapy went from being afantasy with little practical value to becoming a major area of treatment,” stem cells are “within a few years of reaching the medical mainstream.” What’s more, developments in synthetic biology, the process of engineering and re-engineering cells, could make stem cells even more effective.
Regenerating the body
Stem cells are essentially the body’s raw material: basic cells from which all other cells with particular functions are generated. They are found in various organs and tissues, including the brain, blood, bone marrow and skin. The primary promise of adult stem cells lies in regenerative medicine, says Professor Ali.
Stem cells go through several rounds of division in order to produce specialist cells; “a blood stem cell can be used to
