Author(s)

Madhavi Tripathi, Sangeeta Singh^*

Department of Applied Science, Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Allahabad, India.

The stem cells of an organism only possess extraordinary capacity to change into different cell types during the early life and growth of an organism. When these stem cells divide into different new cells, these either remain as stem cells or develop to become other cells with specialized function. For this reason, stem cells offer direct relevance to human health, as theoretically, using stem cell technology, different organs are expected to be regenerated. To this, the Human Embryonic Stem Cells (HESCs) are natural pluripotent cell, but ethical issues covering many countries have put research work on a bit back-foot. However, the Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) technology has completely revitalized the world to use this technology universally and it therefore seems that more research on this technology will surely be of enormous help in public health. In addition, application of the stem cell technology in personalized-medicine has been started recently. In this concern, the stem cell banking facilities have provided new avenues for preserving the cord blood of the new-borne child and treat them in future by using her/his own preserved stem cells. However, like all new technologies, the output from stem cell research requires to be evaluated more closely. Furthermore, with proper guidelines on ethical issues and extended research following these strategies, the stem cell technology is expected to not only be of huge benefit to human health, but also the benefit can be extended to the survival of endangered animals as well.

Human Embryonic Stem Cells (HESCs), Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs), Human Health, Personalized Medicine

Tripathi, M. and Singh, S. (2015) Stem cell technologies in human health: Boon or bane?. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 3, 16-24. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2015.311002.