Umbilical Cord Research
Because of the furor generated by arguments for and against embryonic stem cell extraction, even legitimate medical practices such as cord blood therapy have come under scrutiny. To explain more about cord blood therapy, this article will provide more information on the latest developments in umbilical cord research and provide a little history on the progress of the study.
A brief history on stem cell and umbilical cord research
Before, the tissue released by the mother in the process of giving birth called placental tissue was simply discarded. The umbilical cord, the baby's primary connection to its mother and its source of sustenance, was simply thrown away. All of this changed because of the work of two Canadian scientists.
Ernest McCulloch and James Till each had his own respective research interests, but despite these differences, they collaborated on several projects while working at the Ontario Cancer Institute. The work they did together changed the face of medicine and gave patients suffering from leukemia and lymphoma new hope. They proved the existence of stem cells by observing the reproduction and renewal of rat spleen cells after being injected with bone marrow cells. Eventually, they deduced that the nodules that developed in the spleens (which they called “spleen colonies” at the time) evolved from a single kind of cell, hence the term “stem cell.” This happened way back in the early 1960s when technology was much more limited than it is today. But despite the technological limitation, McCulloch and Till were still able to take a big step towards lessening human suffering, Their achievement was recognized in 2005 when they received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, popularly known as the precedent to the Nobel Prize for Science.
Recent developments
There have been many recent developments in the world of stem cell and umbilical cord research recently. This is all due to the significant advances in technology and genuinely good-hearted people who want to put an end to suffering caused by some diseases. A neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin–Madison named Clive Svendsen recently attempted to use a variant stem cell to allow more efficient drug delivery for the treatment of certain neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's. In the past, patients with Alzheimer's disease would reject pharmacological treatments because they would be recognized by the body as infectious which the brain's store of white blood cells would then eliminate. The use of stem cell delivery has circumvented this. The tissue used was engineered and implanted into the brains of monkeys. Since these cells were analogous to the brain cells already present, they efficiently delivered the medicines which they had been treated with. However, this research has raised some controversies as well. Apparently, Dr. Svendsen has been using stem cells that have been extracted from fetal tissue and this raised ethical concerns about his research.