Regenerative Medicine-an Emerging Therapy in Pakistan

Abstract

Regenerative medicine or stem cell therapy involves the use of stem cells to repair the damaged tissues or organs. It is an emerging therapeutic field in Pakistan. Stem cells have unique properties that make them an effective healing tool. Stem cells have great ability to divide as compared to other cells. Additionally, they are non-specific and non-functional cells. It makes them good therapeutic tools as they can be programmed to any specific cells, provided that they are pre-conditioned according to the n e w m i c r o - e n v i r o n m e n t . T h e t w o aforementioned properties of stem cells make them an ideal tool to restore functions of a compromised organ that has lost cells due to disease or injury i.e. stem cells can not only repopulated an organ by means of their ability to make many copies of themselves but also stem cells can transform into organ specific cells and start performing the functions of their lost predecessors thereby restoring the partial or full functionality of the relevant organ. Additionally since the embryonic stem cells are by default foreign in origin, our immune cells Therapeutic use of stem cells for regenerative
medicine two sets of concerns one is on ethical grounds and the other one is technical in nature. The ethical concern is regarding primarily on the use of embryonic stem cells for research and
therapeutic purposes. Embryonic stem cells are the most potent stem cell type since they have an unlimited potential to make more copies of themselves and transform into any type of tissue
specific cell. There are several issues related to therapeutic use of stem cells, however the most prominent issue is that, the embryonic stem cells are isolated from developing embryos and result
in the destruction of embryo during the procedure. Many people equate an embryo to a person and to them destruction of an embryo is equivalent to murder. these cells as they would treat pathogenic microbes consequently therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells necessitates live long usage of immunosuppressant drugs by the patient. Technically the above two issues can be resolved by recently developed techniques, however, these techniques present other sets of problems. As a result major focus of regenerative medicine has been on the second category of stem cells referred to as adult stem cells.