Adult Stem Cell

Adult Stem Cell

Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells, found throughout the body after development, that multiply by cell division to replenish dying cells and regenerate damaged tissues. Also known as somatic stem cells (from Greek Σωματικóς, meaning of the body), they can be found in juvenile as well as adult animals and human bodies.

Scientific interest in adult stem cells is centered on their ability to divide or self-renew indefinitely, and generate all the cell types of the organ from which they originate, potentially regenerating the entire organ from a few cells. Unlike embryonic stem cells, the use of adult stem cells in research and therapy is not considered to be controversial, as they are derived from adult tissue samples rather than destroyed human embryos. They have mainly been studied in humans and model organisms such as mice and rats.

Read more about Adult Stem Cell:  Adult Stem Cell Therapies, Adult Stem Cells and Cancer, Most Recent Research Presented By NIH, News and External Links

Famous quotes containing the words adult, stem and/or cell:

    I would hope that parents and grown children could be friends. When a friend confides in you that she’s going to do something that you think is most inappropriate, foolhardy or even dangerous, wouldn’t you as a friend say so—in a calm, supportive way? Yet I have to be so careful what I say to my children. I have to walk on eggs to be sure I’m not hurting their feelings or interfering with their lives.
    —Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)

    Apples? New Hampshire has them, but unsprayed,
    With no suspicion in stem end or blossom end
    Of vitriol or arsenate of lead,
    And so not good for anything but cider.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)