BIOLOGY & MEDICINE

The Case for Adult Stem Cell Research

by Wolfgang Lillge, M.D.

(Full text of article from Winter 2001-2002 21st Century)
What Are Stem Cells, Exactly?

Problems of ‘Therapeutic Cloning’

Whoever Would Cure, Must Use Adult Stem Cells

Human Treatments

For more articles on biology and medicine, check the
subject index

Headline collageThe question of stem cells is currently the
dominant subject in the debate over biotechnology and human
genetics: Should we use embryonic stem cells or adult stem
cells for future medical therapies? Embryonic stem cells
are taken from a developing embryo at the blastocyst stage,
destroying the embryo, a developing human life. Adult stem
cells, on the other hand, are found in all tissues of the
growing human being and, according to latest reports, also
have the potential to transform themselves into practically
all other cell types, or revert to being stem cells with
greater reproductive capacity. Embryonic stem cells have
not yet been used for even one therapy, while adult stem
cells have already been successfully used in numerous
patients, including for cardiac infarction (death of some
of the heart tissue).

Stem cells are of wide interest for medicine, because they
have the potential, under suitable conditions, to develop
into almost all of the different types of cells. They
should therefore be able to repair damaged or defective
tissues (for example, destroyed insulin-producing cells in
the pancreas). Many of the so-called degenerative diseases,
for which there are as yet no effective therapies, could
then be alleviated or healed.

It is remarkable that in the debate–often carried on with
little competence–the potential of embryonic stem cells is
exaggerated in a one-sided way, while important moral
questions and issues of research strategy are passed over
in silence. Generally, advocates of research with embryonic
stem cells use as their main argument that such research
will enable us to cure all of the diseases that are
incurable today–cancer, AIDS, Alzheimers, multiple
sclerosis, and so forth. Faced with such a prospect, it is
supposed to be "acceptable" to "overlook" a few moral
problems.

On closer inspection, however, the much extolled vision of
the future turns out to be a case of completely empty
promises: Given the elementary state of research today, it
is by no means yet foreseeable, whether even one of the
hoped-for treatments can be realized. Basically, such
promised cures are a deliberate deception, for behind the
mirage of a coming medical wonderland, promoted by
interested parties, completely other research objectives
will be pursued that are to be kept out of public
discussion as much as possible.

Perfect candor should rule in stem cell research. This
requires that the scientist himself clearly establish the
moral limits of his activity and declare what the
consequences of research with embryonic stem cells really
are. In the process, no one can escape the fact that,
should one wish to use embryonic stem cells for
"therapeutic purposes," the very techniques will be
developed that will also be used for the cloning of human
beings, the making of human-animal hybrids, the
manipulation of germ lines, and the like–thus for
everything other than therapeutic purposes. Any coverup or
hypocrisy in this matter will very quickly reflect upon the
research as a whole.

What Are Stem Cells, Exactly? It is appropriate here to
sketch the characteristics of stem cells, and the overthrow
of some dogmas of developmental biology. Broadly speaking,
a stem cell is one that–in the course of cell division and
increase in the numbers of cells–is able to reproduce
itself and also mature into various specialized types of
cells. The stem cell with the greatest potential
(totipotential) is the fertilized egg cell, which is
capable of developing into a complete organism.

According to the usual–but actually very
doubtful–explanation, the fertilized egg cell has
totipotential up to the stage of division into eight cells,
and in later stages the cells retain only "pluripotential."
That is, they can form many different types of tissues, but
not the complete organism. Embryonic stem cells–that is,
those 50 cells within a blastocyst, which then continue to
develop into the embryo proper–have this pluripotential. In
the course of further specialization, stem cells of
individual tissues are formed, such as that of the bone
marrow, from which all the other kinds of blood cells
develop.

Behind this description lies the conception that a linear
process of differentiation is played out, in the
development of the individual, toward increasingly
"mature," specialized cells in the individual tissues, from
totipotentiality to tissue specificity. This process is
supposed to run only forward, but never backward. That is,
as soon as a cell has reached a certain degree of
"maturity," the way back to earlier stages of development
is closed off. So it is evident that a stem cell’s capacity
to perform is increasingly limited to specific functions,
and it loses, correspondingly, the manifold capabilities
still present in earlier developmental stages.

According to latest reports, however, this dogma of
developmental biology does not hold. Evidently,
tissue-specific stem cells have the ability–as has been
impressively demonstrated in experiments with animals–to
"transdifferentiate" themselves when in a different
environment–that is, to take on the cell functions of the
new tissue. Thus, neuronal stem cells of mice have
transformed themselves into blood stem cells and produced
blood cells. Indeed, there are indications of another
capability of adult stem cells: Apparently they have the
potential to be "reprogrammed." Not only can they adjust to
the specific conditions of a new tissue environment, but
they can even assume more generalized, earlier levels of
development, so that it even appears possible that they
become totipotent again.

in vitro mouse bone marrowLaboratory Virola in Ukraine has
demonstrated that bone marrow stromal cells in culture are
pluripotent–that is, they are able to differentiate into
cells of liver, bone, fat, cartilage, and so on.
Researchers at this laboratory have developed techniques to
differentiate in vitro mouse bone marrow stromal cells into
different types of neuronal and glial cells. The laboratory
is seeking funds to develop similar methods for human bone
marrow stromal cells. Laboratory Virola

Problems of ‘Therapeutic Cloning’ Until now, talk of a
possible source of human replacement tissue has centered on
embryonic stem cells, the production of which has been
extremely controversial. They are a typical product of
"consuming embryonic research," so called, because in
obtaining them from a human embryo produced by artificial
fertilization in vitro, the embryo is destroyed.

The most important research technique for which such
embryos are obtained is "therapeutic cloning." In
principle, a human egg cell is denucleated, that is, the
DNA is removed, and in its place is put the nucleus of a
somatic (body) cell. The egg cell is stimulated with a
short electrical pulse, and it then develops into the
blastocyst, from which stem cells can be removed. These are
identical with those of the donor of the somatic cell
nucleus.

Normally it goes unmentioned, that it is only a small step
from this so-called "therapeutic cloning" (because, it is
claimed, in this way a therapy for diseases can be
developed) to what is called "reproductive cloning." The
only difference is that the development of the embryo is
not interrupted in the early blastocyst stage; instead the
embryo is implanted in a uterus and a complete organism
develops–an exact genetic copy of the donor. "Dolly," the
first cloned sheep, was produced by this method, and here
is the basis for the widespread fear that the same method
that is used for "therapeutic cloning" can also be used for
the selective breeding of humans.

In addition to the obvious moral consideration, there are
still other serious disadvantages that make this path to
the development of human "replacement parts" appear to be
untenable.

The danger of tumors. So far there has been no solution to
the problem of developing in the laboratory an unmistakable
identifier for stem cells that can distinguish them
unequivocally from cancer cells. For this reason, it is
also not possible to produce sufficiently pure cell
cultures from stem cells. So far, with embryonic mouse stem
cells, a purity of only 80 percent has been achieved. That
is in no way sufficient for cell transplantation as a human
therapy. In a cell culture for therapeutic purposes, there
must not be a single undifferentiated cell, since it can
lead to unregulated growth, in this case to the formation
of teratomas, a cancerous tumor derived from the germ
layers. This problem would not be expected with adult stem
cells, because of their greater differentiation.

Genetic instability. Only recently a further problem has
emerged. Fundamental doubt of the suitability of embryonic
stem cells for transplantation has come to the surface
because of the genetic instability of cloned cells.

Cloned animals like Dolly give the outward appearance of
full health, but the probability of their having numerous
genetic defects is very high. Moreover, the entire cloning
procedure is extremely ineffective. Most cloned animals die
before birth, and of those born alive, not even half
survive for three weeks. In the best case, there is a
success rate of 3 to 4 percent.

One of the reasons for this high failure rate has now been
discovered by the German scientist Rudolf Jaenisch at the
Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and his colleague, Ryuzo
Yanagimachi. Their conception is that in cloning–that is,
when the nucleus of a somatic cell is inserted into a
denucleated egg cell–the reprogramming of the genes does
not proceed properly, so that not all of the genes that are
necessary to the early phase of embryonic development, are
activated. Even when cloned animals survive at all,
probably every clone would have subtle genetic
abnormalities that would frequently become noticeable only
later in life.

Jaenisch performed his experiments with mice that had been
cloned using embryonic stem cells in place of the somatic
cells, which produces better results. But to his surprise,
the reprogramming of the inserted genetic material by the
embryonic cells proceeded in a very unregulated way. There
were no two clones in which the same pattern of gene
activation was found, and Jaenisch is convinced that the
use of embryonic stem cells was clearly responsible.

What consequences follow from this for the therapeutic use
of human embryonic stem cells–consequences that will in
fact be multiplied through cloning–are not yet foreseeable.
NeuroblastsNeuroblasts differentiated from bone marrow
stromal cells by Laboratory Virola. Laboratory Virola
Whoever Would Cure, Must Use Adult Stem Cells It has been
known for about 30 years that stem cells are present in the
tissue of the adult, but it was assumed that they could
only form cells of a particular tissue. That is,
reprogramming them was considered impossible. In recent
years, however, pluripotent stem cells were discovered in
various human tissues–in the spinal cord, in the brain, in
the mesenchyme (connective tissue) of various organs, and
in the blood of the umbilical cord. These pluripotent stem
cells are capable of forming several cell types–principally
blood, muscle, and nerve cells. It has been possible to
recognize, select, and develop them to the point that they
form mature cell types with the help of growth factors and
regulating proteins.

This shows that in tissues of the body, adult stem cells
possess a much greater potential for differentiation than
previously assumed. This knowledge must be brought into the
public consciousness with all possible emphasis. If stem
cell research were really only meant for therapeutic uses,
which it most obviously should be, adult stem cells would
promise a very productive research field–and beyond that, a
possibility, without moral objection, to discover
fundamentals of the dynamics of tissue differentiation.

It has become clear from transplantation experiments with
animals, that stem cells of a particular tissue can develop
into cells of a completely different kind. Thus, bone
marrow stem cells have been induced to become brain cells,
but also liver cells.

Adult stem cells obviously have a universal program for
division that is common to all the kinds of tissue stem
cells, and makes them mutually interchangeable. This was
discovered by Alexei Terskikh at Stanford University School
of Medicine in California. He was able to prove that adult
stem cells of blood-forming tissues, and of the brain,
activate the same genes, in order to preserve their status
as stem cells.

In May 2001, a further, spectacular experiment was
reported, which was carried out on mice by scientists at
Yale University. The researchers obtained stem cells from
the bone marrow of male mice, and injected it into females
whose own marrow had been destroyed by radioactive
irradiation. Eleven months later, the male stem cells
(identifiable through the male Y-chromosome) were found not
only in the females’ bone marrow, but also in their blood,
and in their gut, lung, and skin tissues.

If these observations are correct and are confirmed by
other teams of scientists, science should concentrate on
research with adult stem cells and renounce further
experiments with the embryonic.

Human Treatments Moreover, very promising treatments of
serious diseases with adult stem cells have already been
tried. The special advantage is that there are no rejection
reactions, because the cells are from the same body.

Of longer standing is treatment with bone marrow stem
cells. The treatment comes into play when, for example, a
patient has lost his or her blood-forming tissue through
radiation or high-dose chemotherapy. Previously removed
bone marrow stem cells are then retransplanted, and are
able to resume the formation of blood cells.

In 2001, however, a team of doctors at the Duesseldorf
University Clinic carried out a treatment of very
far-reaching consequences. For the first time, they treated
a cardiac infarct patient with stem cells from his own
body. The cardiologist, Prof. Bodo Eckehard Strauer, is
sure that the stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow,
after injection into the infarct zone, autonomously
converted to heart muscle. The functioning of the severely
damaged heart clearly improved within a few weeks.

Four days after the infarction, the doctors took bone
marrow from the patient’s pelvis using local anesthesia.
The stem cells in the marrow were concentrated outside of
the body and implanted in the infarct area the next day
with a special technique via a coronary artery. However,
the doctors could not yet take cardiac tissue to prove
definitively that the implanted blood stem cells had
converted to heart muscle cells. But, according to Strauer,
there is no other way to explain the marked improvement in
the patient’s condition. After this first successful
operation, six more patients have already been treated with
their own stem cells, with similarly positive results.

There are also reports of successful treatments with adult
stem cells in cases of Crohn’s disease (a chronic infection
of the gut), thalassemia (a blood disease), and a rare skin
disease. And–despite the fact that basic research with
adult stem cells is in its earliest beginnings and is in no
way being promoted with urgency–there have been a growing
number of reports lately of experiments with animals, from
which it emerges that adult stem cells can successfully
transform themselves into differentiated cells of organs of
many kinds.

In contrast, reports of successful conversions of embryonic
stem cells are very infrequent and cautious. Thus, we find
in Science of Dec. 1, 2000 (Vol. 290, pp. 1672-1674): "In
contrast, the human embryonic stem cells and fetal germ
cells that made headlines in November 1998 because they
can, in theory, develop into any cell type have so far
produced relatively modest results. Only a few papers and
meeting reports have emerged from the handful of labs that
work with human pluripotent cells. . . . The work suggests
that it will not be simple to produce the pure populations
of certain cell types that would be required for safe and
reliable cell therapies. . . ."

This is the restrained language used by established science
to describe a truly disastrous set of results.

There are, of course, still substantial problems to be
overcome, even with adult stem cells: They are relatively
rare, and are hard to find with the techniques used so far.
They are also not very easy to culture outside of the body.
It was therefore an important advance that Australian
researchers of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of
Medical Research have now found a way to isolate nerve stem
cells with "extreme purity" from the brains of mice. In
Nature of August 16, 2001 (Vol. 412, pp. 736-739), they
reported obtaining a culture of 80 percent purity, compared
to a previous rate of 5 percent at best.

It is now urgently necessary to tackle the research in
precisely this direction, in order to find out the exact
conditions under which the differentiation of stem cells
comes about and how, in detail, it proceeds. Only by this
morally unassailable route will it be possible to develop
new therapies for serious, heretofore incurable diseases,
and beyond that, to improve our understanding of the
development of life itself.

http://www.stemcell-tech.com

Wolfgang Lillge is the Editor-in-Chief of the
German-language Fusion magazine. His article appeared in
the Sept.-October 2001 issue of Fusion, and was translated
into English by David Cherry.

StemEnhance and Athletic Training

By Christian Drapeau

The closest runner was more than 2 miles behind Nina Kraft
when she crossed the finish line of the Ironman Triatholon
in Hawaii, on October 16, 2004.

But instead of feeling triumphant, she kept her head down
and barely looked up at the cheering crowd. A few weeks
later, results showed she had tested positive for
recombinant erythropoietin, a drug that boosts endurance.
"I screwed up," she told the press. "I never really
rejoiced over the victory in Hawaii. I was ashamed the
entire time, especially in front of my family. I cheated."
Since then, doping has become an increasing problem in
competitive and Olympic sports.

So just about anytime an athlete is introduced to
StemEnhance, the first question is, "Does it contain a
stimulant? Will it show on testing for doping?" A number of
years ago AFA had been tested for doping in horses, after a
few trainers saw how large amounts of AFA helped horses on
the race track. But because of the attention given to the
problem of doping over the last few years, passing the
doping test in horses was not enough for top athletes. So
we recently contacted international agencies involved in
testing for doping and tested StemEnhance.

Results: StemEnhance is safe for athletes.

But why would a healthy athlete be interested in
StemEnhance? We are so used to thinking of health as the
absence of disease, and athletes are the picture of health.
To understand why athletes welcome StemEnhance, we need to
think of health as the very optimal state of the body in
order to achieve highest performance. From this point of
view, supporting stem cells constitutes a unique training
and performance strategy.

A little over a year ago, I received a letter from two high
school students in Florida, Hanna and Ilisa Lee, asking if
I would be interested in helping them in a project for the
local Science fair. In their letter, they made the case
that if stem cells could travel to muscles and help muscles
recover faster after exercise, then the ability to exercise
the day after an intense workout would be greater.
Therefore, everday athletes could go further in their
training, turning in greater performances. Consequently,
athletes taking StemEnhance should imporve much faster. I
was impressed. These two teenages understood it all! I
asked them for a detailed protocol and we signed an
agreement. (My main motivation for a signed agreement was
that I wanted them to take the project really seriously. A
serious approach was the best I could do to foster the
development of these two young scientists. Their project
was a great opportunity for them to experience the
excitment of scientific investigation.)

They went to work on their project and did a fabulous job.
They documented how rowers at the University of Florida
achieved greater performance over time when taking
StemEnhance, compared to teammates not taking StemEnhance.
Hanna and Ilisa's science project ended up serving as the
preliminary work for a more in-depth controlled study
currently being carried out by an expert in exercise
physiology.

Now, let us look at the use of StemEnhance by athletes in
more detail. In theory, how may StemEnhance contribute to
giving athletes an "extra edge?" To understand this
relationship, we need to look at the physiology of athletic
training. When an athlete goes through saily training with
maximum effort, numerous microscopic lesions take place in
muscles, tendons and ligaments. These microscopic lesions
rapidly become the sites of discomfort. The body's reaction
to this discomfort produces molecules that create slight
local edema in an attempt to increase blood flow, nutrient
delivery and cellular circulation, as well as lymphatic
drainage to eliminate cellular debris. But this process
also creates molecules that mediate discomfort, and the
goal of discomfort is to limit the person's movements to
maximise the recovery process. The process of discomfort is
very interesting, as it is designed to limit the exposure
of further stress. A muscle that has micro-lesions will not
contract to the fullest, because the body will
neurologically inhibit muscle contraction to prevent
further discomfort. But if a person is an athlete in
training, he or she take some pain killer and goes through
more training the following day, creating more lesions. As
the process continues day after day, the athlete gradually
develops a chronic situation that limits the ability to
train to the fullest.

As part of the body's reaction to training stress, the
micro-lesions also release compounds that attract stem
cells, as stem cells carry out their role of daily renewal.
The greater the number of circulating stem cells, the
greater the number of stem cells that are available to
migrate to the recovering muscles. As stem cells migrate
into the muslce and become muscle cells, they may
accelerate the process of recovery after intense workouts.
As a conmsequence, the day after training by an athlete
using StemEnhance, the muslces may be better prepared for
an extra workout and the person may be able to exercise to
a greater extent. The difference may be small when viewed
day to day, but the difference can accumulate. As a result,
the ability to train a little bit more everyday may lead to
significant differences over time. StemEnhance does not
promote greater muscle mass or greater strength and it des
not support some hormonal process; it simply assists the
muscles, ligaments, tendons and connective tissue in their
process of recovery after intensive workouts, perhaps
allowing athletes to train everyday to the fullest, so they
may tap more effectively into their own potential.

I remember that years ago -- before any knowledge of the
effect AFA has on stem cells -- Dan O'Brien, 1996
Decathalon Gold Medallist was sharing in an interview that
the only supplement he was consuming was large quantities
of AFA. He claimed, "all it does is give me an edge every
day." He may not have known exactly how AFA worked in his
body, but he knew that AFA probably helped him become world
champion.

These days an increasing number of athletes are including
StemEnhance as part of their winning strategies. With the
intense scrutiny athletes undergo to remain fierce
competitors without the use of prohibited performance
enhancing drugs, StemEnhance -- a 5:1 concentration of AFA
will prove a unique tool to support optimum training for
top performance. As a result, the number of athletes using
it will certainly increase, as StemEnhance makes its
official appearance on lists of safe supplements for
athletes. We await with great anticipation the results of
the study investigating the effect of StemEnhance on
performance by athletes. Significantly positive results
from this study -- which is being conducted by an expert in
the field of exercise physiology -- will help to confirm
the evidence gathered by Hanna and Ilisa, as well as the
experience of the many athletes who use StemEnhance each
day as part of their training regimen.

Aphanizomenon Flos Aquae

By Christian Drapeau

We often receive the question: Why is AFA at times referred
to as blue-green algae while at other times it is called a
cyanobacteria or a cyanophyta? Why the different names?

A large field of science is the field of nomenclature or
how to name living things. This science, called taxonomy,
was developed by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), and is based on
the classification of living organisms on the basis of
physical characteristics, for the most part.

This system of nomenclature comprises seven levels of \
classification: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family,
genus, and species. With this naming system, the entire
description of an organism is contained in its name,
whether it is a bacterium, a fungus, a flower or an animal.
In common practice, however, most living organisms are
named using only their genus and species.

For example, the monarch butterfly is called Danaus
plexippus, a dog is Canis familiaris, a wolf Canis lupus, a
man Homo sapiens, and the blue-green algae we know is
Aphanizomenon flosaquae. Since this system of taxonomy is
largely based on physical characteristics, plants or
animals with similar characteristics have similar names.

For example, insects that have eight legs and a two-segment
body are Arachnidae or spiders. A scorpion is called
Scorpionida arachnida and a common spider is Araneae
arachnida. A fruit having one large pit is called Prunus. A
peach is Prunus persica and an apricot is Prunus armeniaca.
Likewise, a beautiful plant growing in water was originally
called Aphanizomenon flos-aquae, or "invisible flower of
water."

Aphanizomenon is a genus of water plants characterized by
their filamentous colony-forming organization with
heterocysts that can fix atmospheric nitrogen. To the first
observers, Aphanizomenon was a plant like algae, since it
carried the distinct green color of chlorophyll.

As it contained the unique blue pigment phycocyanin, it was
commonly called a blue-green algae, or -- more technically
-- cyanophyta, which means "blue plant." But when the
microscope was developed and AFA was first viewed under
magnification, scientists observed that it did not contain
a nucleus, a characteristic shared by all bacteria. Since
it did contain phycocyanin, it was referred to as
cyanobacteria.

On the basis of these observations, AFA was defined at the
time as both a plant (because of its chlorophyll content)
and a bacterium (because of its cytoplasmic DNA). But
later, with advances in biochemistry, another development
made the story yet a little more complex.

Scientists observed that AFA contained in its membrane a
molecule similar to glycogen, a polysaccharide made by
animal cells. Upon this characteristic, one could classify
AFA as partly an animal. So AFA is a bacterium or a plant
-- and to some extent an animal -- and the name one decides
to give it depends on the angle from which one wants to
look at it.

It is in our human nature to classify and name things.
Giving names to things allows us to talk about them; it is
an important part of relating among ourselves. But there is
a caveat to classifying things: As we classify objects, we
then relate more to the classification than to the objects
themselves.

At times people have expressed a concern because AFA is a
bacterium. As we all know, there are a number of bacteria
that can carry very serious diseases. But to think of AFA
as a pathogen because it is a bacterium would be a little
like thinking that a house cat is dangerous because both
fearsome tigers and domestic cats are felines, or that a
penguin has to be able to fly because it is a bird.

You can see that too much generalization within any
taxonomy can lead to serious misunderstandings!

Many bacteria are beneficial to health, and a number of
bacteria are essential to health. In the same way, AFA is a
beneficial microorganism. Whether AFA is called a plant or
a bacterium is truly just a matter of classification.
Therefore, we are all accurate when we call AFA a
cyanobacterium (blue bacterium) OR a cyanophyta (blue
plant) OR cyanophycea (blue seaweed). The best way to refer
to AFA, however, is this:

It is a beautiful aquatic plant which, when concentrated in
our unique and patented product, StemEnhance, enhances stem
cell physiology.

Go to StemEnhance

Introduction to Adult Stem Cells

I'm sure you've already heard about Stem Cells. Maybe you
saw a news story or a read a news article or saw the
Presidential address. They are the most widely publicized
scientific discovery today and with good reason. How about
Embryonic Stem Cells? They have created a great deal of
controversy and with good reason. The lure of what
Embryonic Stem Cells can do for our health has led to
ethical issues surrounding such things as embryo
harvesting. One thing remains, Stem Cells represent the
future of Health and Wellness as we know it. And they are
here to stay.

So what are they?

Stem Cells are master cells, meaning that they can generate
many, if not all, of the different tissues of the body.
They are with us our entire lives and are released
naturally from the bone marrow, but like everything else,
the process behind their release slows down with age. When
there aren't as many stem cells in the blood stream, the
body can't repair and renew itself as it once did. These
master cells are still contained in the bone marrow in the
millions, just not being released as they should.

As this natural release occurs we need to concern ourselves
with finding ways to reverse it. The good news is there are
4 things we can do.

Exercise - as we already know, regular exercise is vital to
good health Proper breathing - deep breathing oxygenates
the blood and tissues Good Nutrition - we need nutrients to
nourish and water to flush toxins from our cells Stem cell
enhancers - a new product category set to become what
antioxidants are today

Stem Cells are the only known source for rebuilding the
body and renewing health by restoring lost or degraded
cells. They have already been used to help treat things
such as Leukemia, AIDS, Alzheimer's Disease and multiple
sclerosis.

They have been used to form new cartilage, grow new corneas
to restore sight to the blind, as treatments for stroke
victims, and several groups are using adult stem cells with
patients to repair damage after heart attacks.

Early clinical trials have also shown initial success in
patient treatments for Parkinson's disease and spinal cord
injury. And, the first FDA-approved trial to treat juvenile
diabetes in human patients is ready to begin at Harvard
Medical School, using adult stem cells. In short, they are
the building blocks of life itself.

Adult versus Embryonic Stem Cells.

Adult Stem Cells is the term given to stem cells after
birth which means babies have adult stem cells in their
bodies. Embryonic stem cells are simply those from embryos
-- undifferentiated, or not developed into a specific cell
types. Research has shown that embryonic stem cells can
develop genetic abnormalities. This is not the case with
our own adult stem cells.

For this reason, researchers such as Kursad Turksen in his
book 'Adult Stem Cells' offer the following wisdom: "Adult
stem cell biology is at the forefront of the emerging field
of regenerative medicine, offering a source of cells to
generate tissues that lack some of the ethical and
political impediments inherent in embryonic, fetal, and
cloned cells."

The biggest advantage of using adult stem cells is that the
body's own stem cells can be used, effectively removing the
problems of immune rejection or abnormalities.

Adult stem cell science is real.

Adult stem cell research offers the best and clinically
proven treatments for a whole host of human diseases and
conditions and is helping people overcome these health
challenges as you read this article. There are currently
over 700 FDA approved clinical trials going on in the
United States using adult stem cells but none for embryonic
stem cells which is why the future of regenerative health
and wellness looks great with Adult stem cells.

Learn more about enhancing your stem cells here:
http://www.stemcell-tech.com