Lecture : What are stem cells? – Part 1 of 4 – Why are stem cells important?
(The following is a transcription of the above video)
We are privileged to be doing all sorts of very interesting research with stem cells and that’s the subject of this lecture.
Cosmic nebula representing the creation of the universe.
Up-close look at a mesenchymal stem cell
The power of creation of our own physiology, of our own health, our vitality, is all imbued inherent in those stem cells. In fact, many people call the stem cell, “The God Cell” and here it is.
That’s the mesenchymal stem cell right there. We’ll talk much more in detail about it later but in the meantime, know that you can go to YouTube and find a movie called The God Cells, which is a very graphic presentation of all the research on stem cells being done these days. Very exciting documentary, I suggest that you go take a look at it.
You are walking around within this incredible dynamic multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of extraordinary intelligence that created us.
Well it so happens that stem cells deal both with disease and with giving us optimal health. That is why studies show that stem cells are so important for our health.
Cells are designed to work at peak efficiency until they cannot and then they are designed to die, called apoptosis.
So why are stem cells important? The stem cell is in fact, the engine of that regeneration. It’s the stem cell that has the ability to replace those dying cells with new cells.
In fact, every organ in your body is filled with stem cells that have become the cells in charge of regenerating that organ. In the liver, there are liver stem cells that regenerate new liver cells and in your kidneys and in your vasculature, etc. All over your body there are stems cells specializing in different organs.
Mesenchymal stem cells are extracted out of umbilical cords.
Here is again, that same picture of the mesenchymal stem cell. I wanted you to look at it again more carefully.
This is a mesenchymal stem cell that’s extracted out of umbilical cords.
You’ll see that the cell has little bumps on it. Those little bubbles all over the surface. These are vesicles and those vesicles are filled with all sorts of signaling molecules, cytokines and things like that. These play a very important role in what the stem cells can do for us and how they function in our bodies.
Hold this image in your mind and we’re going to get back to it.
There are many diseases that afflict our population that modern medicine doesn’t cure. It just manages, for instance diabetes; you don’t cure diabetes you manage it, you manage it with insulin.
There are many, many diseases like that that modern medicine cannot cure. Hopefully you can slow it down and simply manage it.
Well, Regenerative Medicine has a different perspective.
That diseases, even those that are end diseases and they just terminate with death, that those diseases should be able to be stopped and reversed.
Regenerative Medicine and stem cells play an important role in that.
That thing, which modern medicine doesn’t deal with, our health, defining it, augmenting it, promoting it, accelerating it, Regenerative Medicine does exactly that.
Instead of just managing tissue that isn’t working, let’s say your pancreas, if you have diabetes how about replacing the damaged tissue or the dysfunctional tissue with new healthy young tissue that does function well? Then the disease would simply go away and you would be restored to optimal health.
That is what Regenerative Medicine is about.
If you could keep your organs young, you could live a lot longer. It is really that simple.
The kind of motto that we play with here, maybe I should trade mark it, is that Regenerative Medicine “adds years to your life and life to your years”, we kind of like that and that really is what we do with Regenerative Medicine.
Stem cells are defined by two critical characteristics, self renewal and differentiation.
Here we have a slide of a stem cell. Two critical characteristics define what a stem cell is.
It is in fact, what we call an immortal cell, it hangs around for a long time and while it’s hanging around it has two things that it can do.
If we have a stem cell of the liver and the liver needs a new cell, that stem cell in there is going to pop out into two. One of them is going to be a duplicate of the original stem cell and the other one’s going to be that new liver cell that the body or the liver needs.
While we’re discussing the two critical characteristics of stem cells, it’s a good place to say how they are different from our normal organ cells.
The primary difference is that normal organ cells, let’s take the liver again for example; they can duplicate but they’re very limited in how many generations of duplications they can do.
The other thing is that, this fully mature organ cell does not have the ability to stay alive forever, it has that programed death that we spoke of earlier (apoptosis). So limited ability to duplicate and it is going to die after it ceases to be able to function at peak efficiency.
When we are an embryo, we are essentially a collection of stem cells.
Here is the history of where stem cells come from in our development and where they end up going.
Why are stem cells important? Blastocyst Cells Differentiate Into Two Different Types
Here is a larger picture of the blastocyst. The cells on the outside that become the cord and the placenta and the blue cells in the inside
We call them pluripotent or totipotent and they have the potential of becoming anything. Every cell in your body come from those cells.
What are Stem Cells? The Hierarchy of How They Develop
Here’s the hierarchy of how those cells develop.
You start with that blue cell on the top right, the totipotent or pluripotent cell and it’s going to differentiate into different cell lines that become the different organ systems.
On the left, we have those that become all the blood cells and those are not just the red blood cells but also all the immune cells that are floating around your body.
On the right side, we have the cell lines that will become the various organs; the muscles and the nerves and the bones and all the other tissues that make up your body. The organ cells again, another name for them are somatic cells.
Why are stem cells important? All the Organs in Your Body Have Stem Cells
Here we have a diagram that is depicting the fact that all the organs in your body have those green stars in them and those green stars are a small percentage of that organ that are in fact stem cells.
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