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Asked by cookiejayden to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
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Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Hi cookiejayden,
Yep stem cells can die. If the nutrients being supplied are not up to standard or if they are exposed to an infection of some sort they will die. Also they need to be grown in incubators with carbon dioxide and humidity and if these requirements aren’t met this could also cause death.
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Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Stem cells do die and without the right this care and attention this can happen quite quickly. However if they are looked after properly they can survive for a long time, some of the first human embryonic stem cells were made in the late 90’s in Wisconsin in the US and they are still going now. Some cell types we use are immortal and will grow for a long time, but often these are cells which have been made from cancer cells.
I hope that answers your question.
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David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Stem cells do die whether they are in the body or in a dish in the lab. Because stem cells can divide to produce more stem cells as well as differentiate to form different type of cell, if individual stem cells die, they can be replaced by other stem cells as the stem cells that haven’t died divide.
We can keep stem cells alive in our bodies throughout our lifetimes. When we die our cells die, but if we took cells out of our bodies and gave them the nutrients they require in a lab, then we could keep the cells alive. It is relatively easy to do this with stem cells and cancer cells because they normally divide to produce more identical cells. This means that we can, if we do it well, keep stem cells alive forever, but it does take a lot of work to give them exactly what they need to live.
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