Title:Hematopoietic Stem Cells Therapies
Volume: 12
Issue: 2
Author(s): Mihaela Chivu-Economescu and Martin Rubach
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Cell therapies, clinical applications, hematopoietic stem cells, transplant.
Abstract: Stem cell-based therapies are recognized as a new way to treat various diseases and injuries,
with a wide range of health benefits. The goal is to heal or replace diseased or destroyed organs or body
parts with healthy new cells provided by stem cell transplantation. The current practical form of stem cell
therapy is the hematopoietic stem cells transplant applied for the treatment of hematological disorders.
There are over 2100 clinical studies in progress concerning hematopoietic stem cell therapies. All of them
are using hematopoietic stem cells to treat various diseases like: cancers, leukemia, lymphoma, cardiac
failure, neural disorders, auto-immune diseases, immunodeficiency, metabolic or genetic disorders. Several
challenges are to be addressed prior to developing and applying large scale cell therapies: 1) to explain
and control the mechanisms of differentiation and development toward a specific cell type needed to
treat the disease, 2) to obtain a sufficient number of desired cell type for transplantation, 3) to overcome the
immune rejection and 4) to show that transplanted cells fulfill their normal functions in vivo after transplants.
