The human body is a magnificent and complex piece of machinery. The more we learn about it the more we find how little we really know about it. One thing that we keep learning and relearning is that the body has a powerful set of mechanisms for protecting and healing itself.

Over the most recent centuries the science of medicine has been producing an increasing array of accomplishments. The greatest of these accomplishments have often been those which use the body’s own protection mechanisms. Vaccines for small pox and polio come immediately to mind as external stimuli for such built-in protection mechanisms. And there are also protection mechanisms which operate without external stimuli such as those which heal wounds and mend broken bones.

As medical research continues to expand our knowledge of this complex machine much of the attention is focused on some of its smallest elements, the cells. It is the operation of such cells, particularly those defined as stem cells, which power these protection mechanisms. How these stem cells know what to do and when and where to do it remains a mystery for now but their existence in most, and perhaps all, organs of the body is a known fact.

The search to find these stem cells, understand how they function, and how they can be stimulated when necessary is almost certain to deliver on some, if not all, of the promises already made for stem cell research.

The important point about these stem cells is that they are adult stem cells. They are stem cells that are already living in the body, either working or standing by to be summoned for work.

Medicine is already using some of these adult stem cells to treat patients, albeit very crudely and with only modest success. But, contrary to many statements attacking these treatments, there is success. Clinical doctors find these stem cells either in the patient’s bone marrow, hair follicles, nasal sensory tissue, or dozens of other bodily organs, remove some stem cells, stimulate them in vitro to grow them to some higher quantity, then reinsert them near the site of the health problem, be it blood, spinal cord, adrenal glands, etc. This finding, removing, stimulating, reinserting, is a series of non-trivial tasks but it is being done today. For example,bone marrow treatments for leukemia have been used successfully for decades.

To date these adult stem cell treatments have produced few cures but many improvements. In the future it is expected that the removing and reinserting can be eliminated by finding and using a stimulation that the body can use with its internal protection mechanisms in much the way that it now uses vaccines.

The point is that stem cell cures are going to come from adult stem cells, in vivo where we can and in vitro where we must.

What about embryonic stem cells and cloning? Basic research is clearly needed using pluripotent (equivalent to embryonic) stem cells but they need not be human and they will probably never be used directly as cures for humans. That is the subject for another blog.