Stem Cell Storage: Banking Your Future
A new approach revolutionizing the way we see healthcare, aging and longevity
Imagine many years into the future, when you have grown, aged and lived through what life had to offer. You’re now on your death bed. Then there comes this old man (or woman) in a white jacket, with the secret of science in his hand. He promises you that he can replace your ailing body with a youthful one. He will take away the wrinkles on your face and give you the chance to chase that dream you missed once more. Won’t you give him your everything just for that chance?
I know that scenario is far into the future, trust me, as a barely 18 year old kid, I know. You are far from your death and we are far from the science to regenerate a youthful body, or even a youthful organ for that sake. However, some recent science investigations tells us we have to start preparing for this future now, before it's too late. But first, let me tell you why.
Aging In Your Cell
If you scribble on a blackboard and leave it outside for long enough, the writing will eventually be washed off by rain, or hail, or your neighbour watering the plants. In that, the information scribbled on the board is slowly lost as time passes. Similar processes happens within your cells. A cell has a blackboard with all its information, the DNA, telling them who they are and what they do. As time passes, the information is lost. If the cell lost its information, it no longer knows what to do, so ceases to function. This is the process of aging in your cells.
Once the information is lost from the DNA, there are no ways for us to recover it. We can’t figure out the writing on the blackboard once it’s erased clean. So, for much we know, aging in some sense is irreversible. This can be a major problem for many areas of healthcare innovation, especially regenerative medicine.
Regeneration and Aging
Regenerative medicine is a simple concept. If something happens to part of your body, lets say your kidney stops working, regenerative medicine aims to restore its function by replacing it with a functional one. In order to have a kidney that is functional inside your body (not all will, as we each are slightly different), it will most likely have to be grown from some of your own cells. Here is where the problem comes in. Let's say the patient we are trying to treat here is already 70 years old. The best case scenario is that we take some of his cell, and successfully grow it into a kidney. However, this kidney is grown from a 70 years old cell that had already lost some of its function from aging. This is suboptimal to say the least, and potentially even harmful if the cell in question had extensive mutations in its DNA (a hallmark of aging).
So, what this means is that regenerative medicine wouldn’t work as well if at all on the older folks whose cell have already aged. Ironically, most of the diseases that require regeneration and replacement happen most frequently in older people. You don’t hear a lot of younger folks with osteoarthritis, liver failure or lung cancer, right? So what can we do to circumvent this problem? The answer is in cell storage.
Cell Storage
Cell storage is an equally simple concept. A cell is taken from someone when they are young, then freeze in storage facilities with liquid nitrogen for future use. When cells are frozen, they no longer age. This way, when you get older, you have at your hand many of your own younger cells that can be grown and engineered into organs and replacements. To make sure the cells we store can be used to grow into a variety of organs and tissues, we need to store cells that are versatile. Fortunately, in your body, there are many of these cells. They are called stem cells.
Think of stem cells as your original blue print. Inside the stem cell, all of the information (DNA) needed to make you is there, open to be read. Stem cells can theoretically specialise (differentiate) into any type of cell making any tissues and organs, from neurons to skin cells. Because of this particularity, cell storage mostly focuses on stem cells.
By storing your stem cells, you are essentially banking for your future. Years later, when the older you critically needs replacement for a failing heart or lung, doctors can use the youthful stem cells you stored to make them. In this sense, you have banked hope, hope that you can be saved from suffering or imminent death.
Conclusion
None of us can predict the future; but all of us can prepare for it. It’s definitely worth our attention and effort to prepare for the future when it is our life and well-being at stake.
Thanks for reading! I’m Henry, a 18 year old tech and longevity enthusiast on a mission to help extend human health span.
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