Regenerative Medicine Essay

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Regenerative Medicine- Introduction

Though great progress has been made in medicine, current palliative treatments are unable to keep pace with patients’ needs. There are few effective ways to treat the root causes of many diseases. Regenerative medicine is a game-changing area of medicine with the potential to fully heal damaged tissues and organs, offering solutions and hope for people who have conditions that today are beyond repair.
Regenerative Medicine takes 3 interrelated approaches- rejuvenation, replacement and regeneration.

STEM CELLS
Stem cells are a key component of regenerative medicine. They are undeveloped cells capable of proliferation, self renewal, conversion to differentiated cells, and regenerating tissues. [1] In a developing …show more content…

The stem cell populations are maintained by:
Stochastic differentiation
A stem cell divides into two daughter cells (differentiated) while simultaneously, another stem cell divides into 2 undifferentiated daughter stem cells
Obligatory asymmetric replication
A stem cell divides into 2 daughter cells. One daughter cell is a stem cell while the other daughter cell is a differentiated cell.

POTENCY
Potency of a cell refers to the capability of a cell to differentiate into specialized cell types. Potency can be of the following types:
• Totipotent
Toti comes from the Latin word meaning entirely. It is the ability of a single cell to divide and produce all of the differentiated cells in an organism. Examples of these cells in the human body include the human zygote.

• Pluripotent
Pluripotent is derived from the Latin words, plurimus and potens, meaning many and power respectively. Thus, in stem cell biology, pluripotent refers to the capability of a cell to differentiate into any of the three germ layers. Examples include embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. [3]

• Multipotent
They can differentiate into a number of cell types of a closely related family of cells.

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