Your Subscription of as Little as $1.00
Can Make a Difference in Adam's Life
Through Funding Adult Stem Cell Research.
About Adam
Adam was born with cerebral palsy. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck during birth, causing oxygen to not be properly moved to his brain. Later in life, he had surgery for his legs to help him become more mobile. Instead of cutting one of the tendons in each leg, they cut one of his muscles in both legs. The doctors later told him they could not repair that muscle, which is why he wants adult stem cell research and needs medical treatment funding. What he wants most in the world is to walk. Currently, Adam has very little income and can barely afford to live, let alone pay for his physical therapy and stem cell research into treatments. Only you have the power to make his dream of walking become a true success story!
Adult Stem Cells
Stem cell research proved about 30 years ago that stem cells are present in the tissue of the adult, but it was assumed that they could only form cells of a particular tissue. That is, reprogramming them was considered impossible. In recent years, however, stem cell research showed that pluripotent stem cells were present in various human tissues–in the spinal cord, in the brain, in the mesenchyme (connective tissue) of various organs, and in the blood of the umbilical cord. These pluripotent stem cells are capable of forming several cell types–principally blood, muscle, and nerve cells. Through stem cell research, it has been possible to recognize, select, and develop them to the point that they form mature cell types with the help of growth factors and regulating proteins.
This shows that in tissues of the body, adult stem cells possess a much greater potential for differentiation than previously assumed. This research knowledge must be brought into the public consciousness with all possible emphasis. If stem cell research were really only meant for therapeutic uses, which it most obviously should be, adult stem cells would promise a very productive research field–and beyond that, a possibility, without moral objection, to discover fundamentals of the dynamics of tissue differentiation.
It has become clear from stem cell research employing transplantation experiments that stem cells of a particular tissue can develop into cells of a completely different kind. Thus, bone marrow stem cells have not only been induced to become brain cells, but also liver cells.
Adult stem cells obviously have a universal program for division that is common to all the kinds of tissue stem cells, and makes them mutually interchangeable. Alexei Terskikh at Stanford University School of Medicine in California discovered this. Through stem cell research, he was able to prove that adult stem cells of blood-forming tissues, and of the brain, activate the same genes, in order to preserve their status as stem cells.
If these observations are correct and are confirmed by other teams of scientists, science should concentrate on research with adult stem cells and renounce further experiments with the embryonic.
Contact the Help Adam Walk to subscribe for medical treatment funding for
stem cell research and degenerative diseases research
through our subscription we are helping Adam walk one day!
