Lately, stem cells and stem cell therapy have received many news coverage and some of them are quite controversial. However, it is still important to understand about stem cell in general and the several approaches to stem cell therapy. Before we proceed to stem cell therapy, we must first understand stem cell itself. Firstly, stem cell is an undifferentiated cell which has the ability to renew itself and also develop into a tissue with at least three different types.
The Various Types of Stem Cells
There are a lot of categories of stem cells, and this include allogenic, autologous, and xenogenic. Allogenic stem cells are those that came from a donor of a similar species. These type of cells can be utilized without fearing about rejection by the host tissue since stem cells do not have the standard surface markers that can trigger immune response. When we say autologous stem cells, it refer to those cells that obtained from the same animal. These type of cells are good for transplanting since there is no problem about them being rejected. Meanwhile, xenogenic stem cells refer to those that came from a donor of another species, for example a pig. One can expect that these type of cells are most likely to be rejected, however, there are cases when they survive in the body of another species because of their unique characteristics.
What are the Functions of the Stem Cells?
Stem cells have the ability to differentiate into different tissues, as well as the ability that are beneficial for healing. Stem cells have the ability to recruit other local and systemic stem cells help focus on fixing damaged tissue.
If there are any chemical, mechanical and neural changes, the tissue then sends signal that can trigger the stem cells to move into an area. Hypoxia or the lack of oxygen, and inflammation are strong triggers for stem cells to target an injury. Stem cells only accounted less than half of the newly formed tissue, most of it are done by the recruited cells. This is the reason why only small injections of stem cells are used. If you inject a larger number of stem cells, it can intervene with the healing process.
Using Stem Cell Therapy in Horses
The repair of ligament injuries in horses has shown the most successful. It is quite difficult to heal the ligament injuries in a lower leg of a horse. The stem cells from the own fat of the injured horse can be immediately injected in the area of ligament injury to trigger the healing with less scarring.
Stem cell therapy proved to have a huge potential and can used to treat injuries of organ damage. Furthermore, systemic stem cell therapy can be, in the future, treat neurological conditions.