China announces world's first lung regenerative stem cell transplant therapy

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Geez, go China.

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So I can keep on smoking? Just kidding.

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“Brain” stem cells are gonna be a game changer.

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True, but it could back-fire. I mean what happens if you end up with autism or too many brain cells or connections? Or god forbid cancer.

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Good question. I believe brain stem cells therapy works along the same lines as lung stem cells therapy. The therapy targets those cells that are missing. Ah heck i am too tired to say anything smart at the moment.

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Patients with severe COPD and emphysema have long been waiting for this.

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From cutting up soldiers to cutting up babies. I new type of war.

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The article says they’re getting the stem cells from the patient’s own airways, not from dead babies.

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All of the smokers will need to quit smoking so they can afford this some day.

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Then I misunderstand what stem cell is.

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Chordy, there are several kinds. You are thinking of fetal stem cells, which are not generally used because of the obvious ethical problem, and also practical reasons. (You could never have enough to treat thousands of people and the tissue would not be genetically consistent and might have harmful mutations.)

They do still use fetal rat/mouse tissue, on rats and mice, not people.

There is also cord blood stem cells. This is where a baby’s cord blood is collected at birth, it does not harm the baby or mother. This can later be used to treat medical conditions in the baby, or for research.

Then there are the kind they are talking about here, induced stem cells. They take the patients own cells and reprogram them to be stem cells. It’s called induced stem cells or iPSC.

It’s an amazing discovery, I think they found this method around 2006.

Anyway, no babies were harmed in the making of this treatment.

ETA they’re also working on a new kind of induced adult stem cells, universal donor cells. Those cells are taken from adult donors, and the molecular markers that the immune system would identify as ‘foreign’ are taken off, and then they grow a bunch that anyone can use without having to take an immune suppressor. This is not available yet, they’re still figuring it out. But that kind won’t involve babies either.

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Nice explanation on stem cells! Kudos!!

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hopefully Chinese will try which US is taking so much time to do. Stem cell therapy or gene therapy for schizophrenia in humans!!

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