Practical Application of Stem Cells, Where Are We?

Human race have dedicated throughout history for the maintaining the integrity of his or her body. This rule also applies to various living creatures, including lower animals. But, can you believe that these lower animals are superior to humans with respect to their regeneration. In concordance with the cover page of the Science magazine in 1997 featuring the myth of Prometheus, the term regeneration has becoming friendlier than before. Regenerative medicine is linked with regeneration and can be defined as the cutting edge medical strategy using their own cells and proteins to recover the injury or degenerations.

Cell therapy describes the process of introducing new cells into a tissue in order to treat a disease. Cell therapy is a sub-type of regenerative medicine and comprises a separate therapeutic platform technology beside the current three pillars of healthcare industry. The origin of cell therapy can be traced to using the animal cells, but modern cell therapy obtained its scientific legitimacy mainly from the field of bone marrow transplantation which was followed by cord blood stem cell, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and adult stem cell.

Stem cells are a population of immature cells capable of self-renewal and provision of multi-lineage differentiation. Use of adult stem cells with fewer implicating issues is becoming an area of increasing interest. Fat tissue is now believed to be one of the greatest sources of stem cells.

Healthcare industry is a sector within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients for curative and preventive cares. The health care industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy. As the IT industry has gone through times of chaos and excessive enthusiasm, BT specifically the stem cell science is now going through confusion and chaos.

But some areas of stem cell therapy now put forward good results maintaining the high safety profile. The author has shown through international journals that the application of stem cells is effective for skin regeneration and hair regeneration. Some technology is now in the stage of export and widely used in the developed countries.

In conclusion, the hope of maintaining the integrity of body is the basic instinct of all living creatures. The application of stem cells is not a mere dream, and becoming closer to our daily lives in the present and the near upcoming future.

Translation by Park, Byung Soon