Stem cell therapies as an alternative to current medical practices
Louis Ng
Introduction
‘ The regenerative medicine revolution is upon us. Like iron and steel to the industrial revolution, like the microchip to the tech revolution, stem cells will be the driving force of this next revolution ’ (Chaffee, 2016). This quote by Cade Hildreth, the founder of BioInformant.com, embodies a popular opinion of the scientific community that regenerative medicine is the future of medicine. The medical sciences are an ever-evolving discipline with the focus of maintaining and improving the quality of care and life provided to patients within our pre-existing healthcare systems. At the heart of such advancements is research. In recent years, the UK has allocated impressive funding figures for research. In 2015, the government dedicated £2.2 billion towards medical research, and from 2013 to 2019, public sector expenditure reached almost £11.5 billion (Clark, 2020). Over the past decade, there have been huge strides in the development of medicine such as the understanding and prevention of antibiotic resistance or cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation, two areas of research that have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recent years (NobelFoundation, 2021). Nonetheless, there remains the need for improvement in the current treatment of patients; there are countless conditions whose quality of treatment does not reflect the investments in medical research. For example, over 100,000 patients are admitted to hospital annually due to myocardial infarction, more commonly known as heart attacks, in the UK alone. This roughly translates 280 patients per day, or one heart attack every five minutes. Approximately 1.4 million people in the UK today are survivors of heart attacks (BritishHeartFoundation, 2021). During myocardial infarction, the heart suffers from a loss of blood supply that causes the heart irreversible damage by replacing healthy cardiac muscle with scar tissue. Though medication, such as Nitroglycerin and Beta Blockers, that both relax the heart muscle, offer support to hearts with permanent heart damage, there are no treatments that effectively heal the tissues (MayoFoundation, 2021). Current medical practices, defined as the standard treatments and protocols used by major healthcare institutions internationally, contains many examples of this theme; quality of care is restricted to only managing symptoms. The unresolved issue of ineffective treatments requires either the refinement of current medical practices or alternative treatments to be introduced. Lack of progress in this area will be to the detriment to patients, as they must manage their condition for the rest of their life, whether that be through expensive drug treatments or avoiding certain activities. However, the surge of regenerative medicine aims to solve this crisis. Regenerative medicine’s key aim is to develop treatment plans that will repair, regrow, or replace cells and tissues that have been damaged by disease, trauma, or congenital conditions (Wagner, 2021). The uniqueness of the biochemical properties of stem cells enables research in a variety of different fields with the intentions of providing long-term solutions to conditions that are currently only managed. Instead of treating the symptoms, stem cell therapies promise to cure the illnesses at its roots (Wagner, 2021).
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