The emerging, interdisciplinary field of regenerative medicine focuses on the restoration of impaired functions of organs, tissues or cells and can involve a variety of different technologies, including cell therapy. Cell therapy refers to the process of producing new cells to replace malfunctioning or damaged cells as a vehicle to treat disease and injury.
One form of cell therapy is stem cell therapy. Stem cells are self-renewing primitive cells that have the ability to develop into functional, differentiated cells that can replace malfunctioning, damaged and destroyed cells. In general, there are two broad categories of stem cells: adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are derived from various tissues in the human body and can differentiate into many different cell types. Because of this ability, adult stem cells are referred to as “multipotent.” Embryonic stem cells, which are referred to as “pluripotent,” are derived from pre-implantation embryos and can develop into all possible cells and tissues in the body. Embryonic stem cells are also able to self-renew indefinitely in their undifferentiated state.
Many significant and currently untreatable human diseases arise from the loss or malfunction of specific cell types in the body. This is particularly true of diseases associated with aging such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, heart failure, osteoarthritis, and immunosenescence, or the aging of the immune system. This is also true for medical conditions resulting from damage to cells due to acute disease, such as trauma, infarction (heart attack) and burns. Regenerative medicine may also provide treatment options for diseases caused by retinal degeneration which often lead to blindness. Replacing damaged or malfunctioning cells with fully functional ones may be a useful therapeutic strategy for restoring the functions of damaged cells to treat many of these diseases and conditions.