Stem Cell Therapies for Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

Stem cell therapies, and cell therapies in general, have tremendous promise in treating age-related conditions, particularly those that lead to structural damage in the body, such as degenerative disc disease. While animal studies have produced very interesting results, these therapies have yet to achieve more than initial goals in clinical practice, however. Hematopoietic stem cell transplants work well for the uses they are put to, albeit while being a comparatively stressful, higher risk procedure. Immunotherapies based on cell transplants are quite well advanced in the cancer field. First generation mesenchymal stem cell transplants are quite good at suppressing chronic inflammation for a time, but increased regeneration is an unreliable outcome at best. In general, regeneration through cell therapy remains an elusive goal in the clinic. In part, this is likely because it is hard to manage cells in culture. Small differences in implementation of a protocol for sourcing and growing cells used in therapy can cause large differences in the quality of the cells. Two clinicians performing the same work, with the same protocol, in different clinics may produce widely varying outcomes for patients. This has been very evident in the delivery of mesenchymal stem cell therapies. Beyond first generation therapies, delivery of cells that are more specialized to the target tissue has produced promising results in animal studies. Thymic regrowth can be engineered by injec...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs