Question: What are stem cells made out of? How do you give them to your patients?

Michael Schneider answered on 17 Nov 2015:

Stem cells are small, round cells with no obvious special features under a routine microscope. But, they express many special genes, that let grow for many months, and certain ones turn into any kind of cell in the body, much the same way the whole body grows up from just a fertilised egg. These genes have names like Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4. Prof Yamanaka in Japan won the Nobel Prize for showing that four of these genes were enough to convert an adult skin cell into a stem cell that could turn into anything! Other stem cells, like the ones in bone marrow (where blood is produced), skeletal muscle or the heart, mainly turn into the cells needed in their location. Sem cells given to heart patients are usually given in the “cath lab,” using a thin tube threaded from the arm, through a blood vessel, to the heart.