Lazaron

Southern Africa's oldest Stem Cell Storage Bank

Stem Cells

In short, stem cells have two distinct characteristics that distinguish them from other cell types:

1. They are unspecialised cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division
2. Under certain physiological or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become cells with special functions, such as contracting cells of the heart muscle or insulin producing cells of the pancreas.

Scientists already began to recognise that cells constituted what can be described as the building blocks of life in the mid-19th century. This undertaking led to the belief that stem cells give rise to other cells. By the beginning of the 20th century European scientists realised that all blood cells came from one particular “stem cell”, although the word stem cell was not used until the 1990s. However, doctors have been performing bone marrow transplants, which is actually a transplant of stem cells, for over 40 years. Adult stem cells, such as blood forming stem cells in bone marrow, called haemopoietic stem cells or HSC’s are currently the only type of stem cells commonly used to treat human diseases.

In early 1998 researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison lead by James Thompson published what has been described as a ground-breaking paper showing that stem cells are ephemeral, blank slate cells that occur at the earliest stages of human development and could be isolated, cultured and grown in apparently limitless quantities.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that embryonic stem cells can morph into any one of 220 types of cells and tissues in the human body. Nurtured in their undifferentiated state they can proliferate endlessly in culture, and provide vast numbers of cells for research and therapy. The ability of embryonic stem cells to provide us with a window to the earliest stages of human development is perhaps one of the most important aspects in terms of future stem cell breakthroughs.

With special reference to the work of Dr Barry and current research performed by Lazaron, it is important to note that globally scientists work primarily with three kinds of stem cells i.e. cord blood stem cells, adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells obtained from either animals or humans. For ethical reasons though, Lazaron does not work with embryonic stem cells.

There is some debate amongst experts about the purity of the stem cells taken from young children and adults, as they have been exposed to environmental factors. While this is unlikely as adult stem cells are dormant until injury or disease causes them to become active, umbilical cord stem cells are “pure” in the sense that they haven’t had the same exposure. Stem cell therapy ,using cord blood harvesting is recognised as a golden opportunity to use our own cells at a time when they are pristine. It is an opportunity which only occurs once in a lifetime.