From repair of corneal damage to helping burn victims get rid of their scars to treatment of neurological disorders, Indian medical fraternity is looking at a wide area where stem cells could provide cures.
"The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is supporting the programme for use of stem cells in a number of areas. There is work going on in the area of spinal cord. Hyderabad based L.V.Prasad Eye Institute is already using stem cells for repair of damaged cornea," B. M. Gandhi, advisor in DBT, told IANS.
"A task force set up by the government is already looking into some of the applications," Gandhi said.
Stem cells - which are reported to have cured a paralysed woman in South Korea and made her walk after 20 years - are unique in that they have the property to divide and renew themselves for long periods. Researchers feel that the therapeutic potential of stem cells lies in transplanting them to repair damaged or dead tissues in the body.
Stem cells, usually retrieved from the core of five to seven days' old human embryo, can grow into virtually any kind of tissue in the human body when nurtured properly.
At present, there are three possible sources of stem cells - adult stem cells derived from paediatric or adult donors; embryo germ cell (EG cell) stem cells derived from aborted foetuses; and embryonic stem cells (ES cells) derived from disaggregated pre-implantation embryos.
Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) along with Reliance Life Sciences was among the 10 elite research institutions in the world, which were invited by America's National Institute of Health (NIH) three years ago to take part in the federally funded research on embryonic stem cells.
Several other institutes like Maulana Azad Medical College in the capital and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have pioneered a stem cell based technique for the regeneration of tissues and organs.
This could remove the need for organ transplantations, currently used for the treatment for replacing destroyed tissue.
India is also looking at use of stem cells for repair of neurological problems, though a cure is still a long way, feels Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, director of the National Brain Research Centre at Manesar near the capital.
"In the case of stem cells, we feel we can transpose it in the brain and hope that recovery will come, but it is not going to be that easy," said Ravindranath.
"If the stem cells keep multiplying inside the brain we can have cancerous growth," warned Ravindranath.
To have better control over the stem cells, the researcher stressed there is need to find out "the regulatory mechanism by which a stem cell becomes a particular cell type and then further differentiate between a neuron."
NBRC is currently working with both human and mouse embryonic stem cells.
"We have got stem cell lines that are available worldwide and are of gold standards. We are trying to use them to understand how new molecules or cells interact to make networks and make for the behaviour. Meanwhile, we are trying to develop our own stem cell lines," said Ravindranath.
-Indo-Asian News Service