Stem Cells Research：What They Are and How to Research

Posted by creative-bioarray@outlook.com on February 18th, 2021

Stem Cell Research is of great importance because it can enhance understanding of how diseases occur, test new drugs for safety and effectiveness, and help cure diseases, etc. Before starting research, it is necessary to learn about stem cells.

What are stem cells?

Stem cells are the body's raw materials because they can develop into other specialized types of cells. Stem cells provide new cells for the body to grow, and replace cells that are damaged or not fully functioning for some reason. As stem cells are the source of all tissues, understanding their properties helps us understand the healthy and diseased body's homeostasis and development. Stem cells are marked with two unique properties: first, they can divide themselves over and over again to produce new cells; second, as they divide, they can change into the other types of cells that make up the body.

What are the types of stem cells? 

Embryonic stem cells are those stem cells that come from embryos aging from three to five days old. At this stage, an embryo is called a blastocyst, and the stem cells from it can divide into more stem cells or become any type of cell in the body. Therefore, embryonic stem cells will be used to regenerate or repair diseased tissues and organs.

Adult stem cells are found in most adult tissues, such as bone marrow or fat. The ability of adult stem cells is more limited in giving rise to various cells of the body than embryonic stem cells. However, scientists have successfully transformed regular adult cells into stem cells using genetic reprogramming. This new technique may allow researchers to use reprogrammed cells instead of embryonic stem cells and prevent immune system rejection of the new stem cells. 

Perinatal stem cells are those stem cells found in amniotic fluid as well as umbilical cord blood. These stem cells also can change into specialized cells. Still, more study of amniotic fluid stem cells is needed to understand their potential.

How to carry out stem cell research?

To process stem cell research, some necessary steps need to be completed. One of the steps of stem cell research is stem cell line generation.

Because of ethical problems of embryo's utilization in research use, more researchers focus on adult stem cell and iPSC, a technique named 'reprogramming' to develop stem cells from somatic cells. Scientists are using this technique to work on ways to develop stem cells from cells other than embryos. In stem cell characterization, distinguishing stem cells from a heterogeneous cellular population is necessary but challenging.

Stem cells or stem cell-derived downstream cells are the best choices to establish cell models to evaluate new compounds since they are patient-matched. Stem cell assay development and screening using cell viability assay, proliferation, apoptosis, ion transport, pathway signaling, gene expression, protein expression, and post-translational modifications services is also an essential part of stem cell research.

IPSC-based disease modeling can help understand diseases such as Brugada Syndrome, Schizophrenia, Hepatic disorder, etc. A major setback in it is to discriminate between the effects of the causative mutation and the genetic background of these cells. In the past decade, researchers have made great improvements in genome editing techniques, one of them is CRISPR/Cas9 technique, which can help researchers establishing IPSC-based disease models. 

Stem cell research has the potential to make a big contribution to human health. However, there is some controversy around the development and usage of human embryos. There's still a lot more to be done before related research results are fully implied on human body.