Basic biology and therapeutic application of stem cells in various human and animal diseases

摘要

Stem cells are a population of precursor cells that are capable of developing into many different cell types in the body. They are unspecialized cells that can give rise to specialized cells and capable of dividing and renewing themselves for long periods. Based on the potency, stem cells can be totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent, oligopotent, unipotent and based on source it can be divided as embryonic, fetal, adult, amniotic fluid, cord blood, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem cell microenvironment (niche) providing support and stimuli to control stem cell properties. The application of stem cells in human medicine is well established and it is commonly used for chronic and accidental injuries and in veterinary medicine they rapidly become a visible tool for regenerative therapy of chronic, debilitating and various unresponsive clinical diseases and disorders. Unquestionably, the development of bioprocess technologies for the transfer of the current laboratory-based practice of stem cell tissue culture to the clinic as therapeutics necessitates the application of engineering principles and practices to achieve control, reproducibility, automation, validation and safety of the process and the product. A stem cell therapy is a treatment that uses stem cells, or cells that come from stem cells, to replace or to repair a patient’s cells or tissues that are damaged. Stem cells undoubtedly offer tremendous potential to treat many human and animal diseases and to repair tissue damage resulting from injury. Although stem cell holds pivotal promise in treatments of many incurable diseases, it has many critical limitations.