Micro-healers searching for their place

HYDERABAD: Stem cell Research in India: Current Scenario and future perspective Significant advances have been made in stem cell research and therapy in the recent years. Many steps have been taken by Department of Biotechnology, ICMR, Dept of Science and Technology, CSIR in order to boost up the Stem cell research. A lot of work is being carried out by research institutes like AIIMS (Delhi), National Center for Cell Science (Pune), Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology (Trivandrum), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (Hyderabad) and L V Prasad Eye Institute (Hyderabad). Most of these institutes are focusing on areas like regeneration of damaged muscles due to heart attack, stroke or cornea damage. The ability of the stem cells to differentiate into multiple cell types is what makes stem cell therapy standout from other treatment modalities. Other treatment models target the symptoms but stem cells regenerate the system at cellular level and the uniqueness lies behind the power of regeneration. Stem cells regenerate the damaged cells (cause behind the origin of disorder) and cure the disease by acting on the cause from where disease originates. Says Dr Rajashekar Reddy, senior consultant-neurology, Max Hospital, “There are diverse neurological conditions that do not have methods to arrest the disease or reverse the disease condition. Stem cells will benefit in curing certain neurological conditions in future.”Presently embryonic and non-embryonic ‘somatic’ or ‘adult’ stem cells are the two predominant cell types that scientists are working on. “Though we need enough proofs to recommend it but it has promise and we all are hoping that it will fulfill the promise,” adds Dr Reddy.The holy grail of modern medicine?The vast potential of human embryonic stem cells has been unleashed by Dr Geeta Shroff, NuTech MediWorld, who has been transplanting embryonic stem cells to patients without the use of immunosuppressant and without any immune rejection for many years. Dr Shroff says, “In earlier attempts, use of embryonic stem cells have not been successful predominantly because there are animal products involved, which significantly increases the chances of side effects like tumor formation. Since we use pure human embryonic stem cells, the chances of any side effects or reactions in the body are effectively zero which has been proved by our own data accumulated in last 10 years.” Dr Rakesh Gupta, senior consultant-medicine, Apollo Hospital says, “Not many are practicing stem cell therapy in private but seeing the results for last 8-10 years it is clear that it is not causing harms and results vary from patient to patient as few show gradual improvement and few recover very fast.” The treatment outcomes so far, it seems, have been very encouraging. Stem cell therapy promises to be the next big thing in medicine. It has the potential to usher in an era of health, hope and happiness.