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What is a stem cell? How does it apply to current health care research?

What is a stem cell? How does it apply to current health care research?

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A stem cell is a cell with the unique ability to develop into specialised cell types in the body. In the future they may be used to replace cells and tissues that have been damaged or lost due to disease.

There are three main types of stem cell:

*embryonic stem cells

*adult stem cells

*induced pluripotent stem cells

Stem cells have several uses including:

research – to help us understand the basic biology of how living things work and what happens in different types of cell during disease.

therapy – to replace lost or damaged cells that our bodies can’t replace naturally.

Research is looking to better understand the properties of stem cells so that we can:

*understand how our bodies grow and develop

*find ways of using stem cells to replace cells or tissues that have been damaged or lost.

We can use stem cells to study how cells become specialised for specific functions in the body, and what happens when this process goes wrong in disease.

If we understand stem cell development, we may be able to replicate this process to create new cells, tissues and organs.

We can grow tissue and organ structures from stem cells, which can then be studied to find out how they function and how they are affected by different drugs.

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