Question: Do you think that stem cell research will lead to a new disease cure?

Ee Lyn Lim answered on 21 Jun 2013:

Stem cells are extremely useful for replacing diseased organs with healthy ones! Many diseases lead to one or more of our organs breaking down – heart disease, liver cirrhosis, kidney failure, all sorts of cancer…just to name a few. And our body doesn’t just get damaged because of disease – injuries can happen too, like a car crash, or burns. Right now, the only way we can replace these broken organs is to get them from someone else! But there are far far fewer organ donors than there are people who need transplants, so many people die while they are waiting for a suitable donor. And even if you do manage to get a transplant, there will always be the problem of rejection, which is your body saying it doesn’t like this big foreign object inside it and trying to get rid of it. Even if you take drugs to suppress the immune system, even if the organ comes from a close family member, there will always be some rejection, so the transplanted organ will only last a few years before it becomes useless.

I’m really looking forward to stem cell research revolutionising the field of transplantation. If you needed a new kidney, for example, your doctor could just get some cells from your blood, turn them into stem cells, and grow them into a new kidney! And this kidney would be YOURS – it’s grown from your own cells – so there would be no rejection, and no need for immunosuppression. Of course, we’re still a loooooong way from being able to grow a real working kidney in a test tube, but we’re working on it (though some scientists did manage to grow a rat’s kidney recently – see here http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/apr/14/kidney-grown-lab-transplanted-animal).