Introduction To Stem Cells

This video is an informative animated presentation that explains in detail about Stem Cell therapy. Stem cell transplant is a procedure that uses stem cells to treat a disease or condition. Currently stem cell therapy only treats diseases and cancers of the blood. For example, in leukaemia the patient’s bone marrow makes many abnormal white blood cells that can’t do their job to fight infection. Overtime, these abnormal cells crowd out the production of healthy white blood cells. In stem cell therapy for leukaemia, called hematopoietic stem cell transplantation a doctor will take a sample of blood or bone marrow from the patient or a donor and perform a stem cell transplant. In some cases, donor blood may come from the baby’s umbilical cord after it’s born. These tissue samples contain healthy hematopoietic (blood-forming) blood cell. Then the doctors will give the patient the chemotherapy drugs or use radiation to kill the abnormal white blood cells and their stem cells. Once the abnormal cells are gone, the doctor will transplant the healthy hematopoietic cells from the tissue samples into the patient.