It was in 1981 when scientists first achieved mouse embryonic stem cell cultures. Although this milestone marked the development of numerous subsequent investigations, until 1998 the culture of a human stem cell laboratory was not achieved. In that year, two teams separately announced that they had isolated and cultivated human stem cells from, in one case, from embryos in the blastocyst phase and, in the other, from aborted fetuses. The research teams were led by biologists John Gearhart, from Johns Hopkins University, and James Thomson, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. During the 1990s, scientists discovered many other characteristics of these cells, such as adult stem cells from a specific tissue (for example blood), can cause cells from other types of tissues, such as nerve cells (neurons). One of the most interesting results was obtained by researcher Fred Gage at the Salk Institute, who showed that the adult human brain can create new neurons.
Before Gage's discovery, neurobiologists assumed that our brain did not create any new cells after birth. Presumably, this ability comes from the stem cells of this tissue. By the end of the 20th century, researchers had not yet developed any actual clinical application with isolated stem cells and kept in culture. However, doctors used stem cells to treat diseases long before they were isolated. In 1968, scientists successfully developed the first bone marrow transplant, a procedure by which a patient receives an infusion of healthy bone marrow cells. The purpose of such a transplant was to restore the ability of the marrow to generate blood cells in patients who had undergone strong chemotherapy processes, who had deeply damaged that tissue. The researchers suspected that the stem cells present in the bone marrow implant were responsible for such restoration.
Currently, bone marrow transplantation has become a therapy for certain types of cancer (leukemia, lymphoma) and other diseases of the blood or bones. This type of therapy, which consists of extracting stem cells from a tissue to replenish it after damage, could be carried out in other tissues. Currently, there are numerous open lines of research based on stem cells that will allow knowing the mechanisms of cell differentiation and will provide, in the not too distant future, new treatments for various diseases, until now incurable. Some of the therapeutic possibilities offered by stem cells are their use to replace damaged cells and tissues, or their use to test, before doing so in experimental animals or in humans, new drugs.





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