• Question: when a cell turns viral how come it can also is we had stem cells to use could we stop cells turning viral and beat illness

    Asked by osg9 to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hi osg9

      I’m guessing you mean viral in the sense of spreading without control, like a video on the web? If so that is basically cancer, in cancer a mutation changes a cell so that it keeps making copies of itself rather than only dividing when necessary. This then leads to a tumour which can then spread to other parts of the body. There are currently people working on using different types of stem cells to try and stop cancer, like umbilical cord stem cells for example. These therapies look interesting, but at the moment they are experimental and drug treatments are still the best therapies currently.

      There are other types of illness which are caused by cells behaving badly, for example autoimmune disorders are types of illness, like multiple sclerosis, where the body starts to attack itself. In these illnesses the immune system mistakes the bodies own cells for invading cells and starts to attack them leading to the neural degeneration and disease. There are trials starting that use stem cells to try and treat MS and I think this is a really interesting field of research. I think stem cells will be really useful to treat diseases like MS and Parkinsons and in the future I think these will become standard treatments for these diseases.

    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      Hi osg9,

      I’m really not sure whether I understand your question. Are you asking about infections with viruses? I’ll try to tell you a bit about viruses.

      Viruses are really tiny infectious things that can only replicate to make more of themselves after they have infected a cell. Examples of viruses include flu and the types of stomach bugs that cause vomiting and diarrhea. These viruses manage to get into our cells so that they can produce more of themselves and then escape to get into other cells and make us sick. Our immune systems fight viral infections by detecting that cells have been infected by viruses and then killing those infected cells to stop them spreading the virus further.

      If we wanted to try to fight viral infections with stem cells, one thing we could do is to use stem cells in the lab to make lots of the immune cells that would attack the infected cells so that we could give these to the sick patient and help their immune system to fight against the virus.

      I hope this answers your question! If not, maybe try asking a different question or making a comment here! Thanks 🙂

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