viernes, 16 de octubre de 2009

Scientists harvest stem cells from placentas for future treatments



The last years scientists have been working in an important health advance. It consists in use placentas after birth because it have cells that can be used for try a lot of complicated diseases like: thalassaemia, leukaemia and sickle cell disease.

Frans Kuypers (of the Children's Hospital and Research Centre) and his team found that placenta contained up to five times as many as cord blood.

There are a lot of types of stem cell and the most versatiles come from embryos .. but there is a big ethical problem in use embryo´s stem cells because some believe that is a crimen ( because they´re killing a life.). However adults have stem cells too...for example in bone marrow...but this cells there aren´t pluripotent like embryos cell... there are multipotent. ( pluripotent cell gives origin at all type of cell.. and multipotent cell gives origin at cells of the same lineage).

Also Kuypers showed that placent had the same characteristics of cord blood, however in placents cells are more primitive, meaning they are more versatile.. A good new is that every time more parents take the decition of freeze the cord blood of their newborn children with the hope that it might one day prove useful for treatments.

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