Medical opportunities become vaster with the collaboration of different fields in biology –chemical engineering, stem cell biology and molecular genetics.
With the advances of science in these fields, controlling degenerative diseases and disorders in the future should be assured. By understanding these diseases and disorders at a molecular level, science can prevent symptoms of diseases or replace dead or damaged cells.
One of the many uses of stem cells can be seen is gene therapy that can correct genetic diseases early on in life. Another useful purpose of stem cells is the chance to test drugs on certain tissues to verify the different effects on people which will enable doctors to give more accurate diagnosis and prescriptions of conditions.
Scientists are now researching different ways on how to transform specialized cells into undifferentiated, pluripotent stem cells. This sudden burst of encouragement was brought about by the creation of Dolly the sheep back in 1996, the product of the Dolly experiment which successfully cloned the first mammal.
It is exciting to see what other possibilities researchers are able to come up with regarding stem cells especially when it would lead to the creation of innovative treatments, while at the same time avoiding the primary concern with stem cell therapy which is the formation of tumors.
Researchers believe that the purpose of animal cloning is for the treatment of diseases.
