Biology Report. How Stem cell research can help enhance medical advancements

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Mide Kole-Emmanuel        Biology Report 07/03/09

How Stem cell research can help enhance medical advancements

In this biology essay I will be discussing how significantly stem cell research influences medical advancements; there have many reports which suggest that the manipulation of stem cells can be very beneficial to the future of the medical industry. The latest studies which are being researched by scientists include, stem cells being used to cure Parkinson’s disease.

 It has been suggested that scientists have identified a stage during dopamine neuron differentiation that may be the critical time to collect human embryonic stem cells for transplantation to treat Parkinson's disease. It would be an extraordinary breakthrough for the medical world if Parkinson’s disease was able to be cured, this is because it has a devastating effect that ruins many lives, especially the elderly, however researchers face many problems; firstly, the task of finding a method for the cure and another is to overcome the ethical and economical obstacles concerning the research into the extraction of stem cells.  

Just How Bad Is Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease is a very painstaking disease; it is a degenerative disorder of the brain and affects the motor skills of an individual, it is most common in people above the age of 60. This disease is caused by the insufficient formation and action of dopamine, which is produced in the dopaminergic neurons of the brain. The source that provided me with this information was Wikipedia, although it is useful website to gain information from I do not believe it is reliable. The reasons for this is because it allows anybody who has access to the website to edit various articles, meaning that they could contain inaccurate or misguided information therefore it will not have the detailed knowledge sought for were it to be written by scientists.

In America scientists have been searching for a method which would allow them to manipulate stem cells in order to create new dopamine neurons and select the ones that may work as a therapy. Without the use of synthetic genes this advance represents an important leap forward in the mission to devise a viable cell replacement therapy for Parkinson's disease¹.

        All these proposed developments provide great evidence which suggest that the stem cells have and are still to contribute significantly towards medical advancements. I have identified problems which encounter medical science progression however it seems that stem cell research has found a way to conquer them.

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A new found, healing process?

In terms of healing mental and physical disorders stem cell research has gained momentum giving great optimism to Parkinson’s disease sufferers. Scientists, most notably Lorraine Lacovitti a PhD professor and interim director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences of Thomas Jefferson University, along with her research team have found that neural progenitor cells that express the gene Lmx1a are committed to the midbrain dopamine neuron lineage, but still retain proliferative capacity. As a result of these characteristics, the stage at which Lmx1a is expressed may be ideal for transplantation.

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