STEM CELL TECHNOLOGIES

Stem Cell Technologies on Drug Discovery, Target Validation and Therapy

Stem Cell Technologies on Drug Discovery, Target Validation and Therapy

Stem Cell Technologies and Drug Discovery

In addition to replacing lost or damaged tissues, is expected to accelerate stem cell research on basic processes of diseases, basic drug discovery and selection of drugs that are being developed at this time.

(Harold et al., 2009)

It is hoped that stem cells dramatically enhance the ability of the drug to determine the side effects of new drugs at a much earlier stage of the development process, an advantage that would significantly reduce costs and accelerate the timeframe for development of new drugs. Currently, all drugs undergo extensive testing on animals before testing in humans for the first time. However, animals are not human. Drugs seem to be completely harmless in animals sometimes have serious side effects in humans.

The ideal solution to the problem of drug side effects of drugs would be tested on human cells before proceeding to clinical trials on humans. The most common side effects of drugs are produced in the liver, kidney and heart. For this reason, these are the tissues that researchers are trying to get from pluripotent stem cells for use in determining the toxicity of drugs. (Colin, 2007)

The idea underlying the determination of toxicity using human stem cells would mean that the banks had pharmaceutical embryonic stem cells and people with a wide variety of genetic backgrounds. Then they could grow heart cells, liver or kidney created from such stem cells in the presence of a drug. If these cells showed signs of toxicity, would be seen as a sign that the drug is not a good candidate for human trials (Godawa, 2009).

This work could also reveal the existence of groups of people with certain genetic background that respond or not respond well to a given drug. This type of personalized medicine would allow pharmaceutical companies to develop safe and effective drugs for identified groups of people.

Stem cells provide a powerful tool to study how a disease develops in human cells. Pluripotent stem cells created through induced pluripotent stem cells or through somatic cell nuclear transfer are genetically identical to the person who donated the cell to create the lines. If such person has Parkinson's disease, for example, researchers can grow these cells in a capsule and give them the characteristics of the type of neurons that are impaired in Parkinson's disease(Colin, 2007). The stem cell researchers can then study the cells to try to understand what goes wrong when they begin to develop the disease in the capsule. These studies could lead to improved ways of detecting the disease early or to develop treatments. For example, if disease-specific cells in a capsule behave as tissue disease, drug companies could use to find compounds that enhance or reverse the disease

Embryonic stem cells may provide the only glimpse of what happens in the early days of human development. One of the first decisions made by these cells is ...