stem cells types

types of stem cells

...... cells are obtained from the inner cell mass of the ....., a mainly hollow ball of cells that, in the human, forms  .......days after an egg cell is fertilized by a sperm.

Embryonic stem cells are ......, meaning they can give rise to every cell type in the fully formed body, but not the ..... and .....

These cells are incredibly valuable because they provide a renewable resource for studying normal development and disease, and for testing drugs and other therapies.

Human embryonic stem cells have been derived primarily from ......  created by ...... for assisted reproduction that were no longer needed.

Tissue-specific stem cells (also referred to as )

more specialized than embryonic stem cells.

can generate different cell types for the specific tissue or organ in which they live.

For example, blood-forming (or hematopoietic) stem cells in the bone marrow can give rise to red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.

Some tissues and organs within your body contain small caches of tissue-specific stem cells whose job it is to replace cells from that tissue that are lost in normal day-to-day living or in injury, such as those in your skin, blood, and the lining of your gut.

can be difficult to find in the human body, and they don’t seem to self-renew in culture

seem to self-renew in culture easily

However, study of these cells has increased our general knowledge about normal development, what changes in aging, and what happens with injury and disease.

“mesenchymal stem cell” aka

refer to cells isolated from stroma, the connective tissue that surrounds other tissues and organs.

Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Cells by this name are more accurately called “......” by many scientists.

the first MSCs were discovered in the  and were shown to be capable of making bone, cartilage and fat cells

MSC
Since then, they have been grown from other tissues, such as ........and ......

being tested as treatments for a great many disorders, but there is little evidence to date that they are beneficial.

Scientists do not fully understand whether these cells are actually stem cells or what types of cells they are capable of generating.

are cells that have been engineered in the lab by converting tissue-specific cells, such as skin cells, into cells that behave like embryonic stem cells.

critical tools to help scientists learn more about normal development and disease onset and progression, and they are also useful for developing and testing new drugs and therapies.

While iPS cells share many of the same characteristics of ......., including the ability to give rise to all the cell types in the body, they aren’t exactly the same.

For one thing, the first ..... cells were produced by using viruses to insert extra copies of genes into tissue-specific cells.

Researchers are experimenting with many alternative ways to create .....cells so that they can ultimately be used as a source of cells or tissues for medical treatments.