After former President Joseph Estrada, 75, admitted that he had a stem cell therapy in Germany, the 88-year-old Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile also disclosed that he had undergone such treatment, too.
“Well, I guess it gave me some energy,” the lawmaker told ANC’s Headstart program. “Actually, the treatment that I got was not in Germany but here.”
Award-winning movie actress Lorna Tolentino had also undergone stem cell treatment in Germany to get rid of the back pain caused by scoliosis, a disorder that causes an abnormal curve of the spine, or backbone.
Actually, stem cells are master cells of our body — cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are created.
Under the right conditions in the body or a laboratory, stem cells divide to form more cells, called daughter cells.
These daughter cells either become new stem cells (self-renewal) or become specialized cells (differentiation) with a more specific function, such as blood cells, brain cells, heart muscle or bone.
Stem cells are unique – no other cell in the body has the ability to self-renew or to differentiate.
According to science, the two broad types of stem cells are: embryonic stem cells that are isolated from the inner cell mass of blastocysts, and adult stem cells that are found in adult tissues.
In a developing embryo, stem cells can differentiate into all of the specialized embryonic tissues.
In adult organisms, stem cells and progenitor cells act as a repair system for the body, replenishing specialized cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin or intestinal tissues.
The term “stem cell” was proposed for scientific use by the Russian histologist Alexander Maksimov (1874–1928) at congress of hematologic society in Berlin in 1908.
However, research in the stem cell field grew out of findings by two Canadian scientists Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till in the 1960s.
Today, researchers believe stems cells offer “great promise” for new medical treatments.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that scientists are hoping stem cell studies can help in increasing understanding of how disease occurs.
By watching stem cells mature into cells that eventually become bones, heart muscle, nerve cells and other organs and tissue, researchers and doctors may better understand how a variety of diseases and conditions develop.
For another, researchers believe that stem cell research can be a venue to generate healthy cells to replace diseased cells.
Researchers hope they can train stem cells into becoming specific cells so that those specialized cells can be used to regenerate and repair diseased or damaged tissues in people.
Stem cells could also be grown to become new tissue for use in transplant medicine.
Finally, with stem cell research, researchers can test new drugs for safety and effectiveness. B
efore using new drugs in people, researchers could use stem cells to test the safety and quality of investigational drugs.
For instance, nerve cells could be generated in order to test a new drug for a nerve disease. Tests could show whether the new drug had any effect on the cells and whether the cells were harmed.
When most people think of stem cell research, they think of embryonic stem cell.
And this is where controversy comes in. Embryonic stem cells are obtained from early-stage embryos — a group of cells that forms when a woman’s egg is fertilized with a man’s sperm.
One such source is fetal tissues (a fetus is defined as an embryo that is at least 55 days old) from terminated pregnancies.
Extracting stem cells from the embryos destroys the embryos. This raises significant ethical questions.
While some feel that an embryo is not yet human, there are others who believe that at the moment of conception, the single cell formed is already a human being.
In recent years, however, it has been shown in principle that adult stem cell lines can be manipulated to generate embryonic-like stem cell lines using a single-cell biopsy similar to that used in so-called “preimplantation genetic diagnosis” that may allow stem cell creation without embryonic destruction.
But opponents of the research argue that embryonic stem cell technologies are a slippery slope to reproductive cloning and can “fundamentally devalue human life.”
Again, those in the Pro-Life movements argue that a human embryo is a human life and is therefore entitled to protection.
But on the contrary, supporters of embryonic stem cell research argue that such research should be pursued because the resultant treatments could have significant medical potential. It is also noted that excess embryos created for in vitro fertilization could be donated with consent and used for the research.
So far, have stem cells already been used to treat diseases?
The answer is yes. Stem cell transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants, have been performed in the United States since the late 1960s.
These transplants use adult stem cells. On the other hand, stem cells from umbilical cord blood have been successfully used in clinical trials to treat rare genetic diseases.
However, therapies using embryonic stem cells aren’t yet ready to treat diseases in people.
Stem cell therapy is the replacement of diseased, dysfunctional or injured cells with either adult or embryonic stem cells. It’s somewhat similar to the organ transplant process but uses cells instead of organs.
Stem cell therapy is sometimes called regenerative medicine.
Researchers grow stem cells in the lab. These stem cells are manipulated to make them specialize into specific types of cells, such as heart muscle cells, blood cells or nerve cells.
This manipulation may involve changing the material in which the stem cells are grown or even injecting genes into the cells. The specialized cells could then be implanted into a person.
For example, if the person had heart disease, the cells could be injected into the heart muscle.
The healthy, transplanted heart cells could then contribute to repairing defective heart muscle.
The NIH urges, “Studying stem cells will help us understand how they transform into the dazzling array of specialized cells that make us what we are.
Some of the most serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, are due to problems that occur somewhere in this process.
A better understanding of normal cell development will allow us to understand and perhaps correct the errors that cause these medical conditions.”
Another potential application of stem cells is making cells and tissues for medical therapies.
Today, donated organs and tissues are often used to replace those that are diseased or destroyed.
Unfortunately, the number of people needing a transplant far exceeds the number of organs available for transplantation.
