Why Are Stem Cells Important

Hello everyone as part of my PrinHealthSci project I read an article that was very captivating to me. As many of you may know, heart attacks are fatal occurrences that typically result in the death of part of a heart muscle. Recent studies at John Hopkins Medical Hospital have shown that a special sticky protein, gel that they created can help stem cells stay in or on rat hearts and restore their metabolism after transplantation. This discovery has given a new way and hope for researchers to heal the human hearts after heart attacks. This research started with the problem of how although stem cells have worked well in repairing organs after injury, they have not helped the heart heal itself because very few of the transplanted cells survive because before the cells have a chance to get attached to the wall of …show more content…
Many experimenters tried to find different solutions to this problem one of which was to increase the number of these stem cells that are injected into the heart but with no benefitting results. In attempt to counter this problem, three of the John Hopkins residents joined together and discovered a hydrogel that combined serum and hyaluronic acid, to create a sticky gel. The two components took a vital role in this gel, the serum served as a protein that had all the parts of blood for a cell to survive while the hyaluronic acid was a molecule that already existent in the heart. This gel served as a synthetic stem niche because it enclosed stem cells while taking care of them and rapidly restoring their metabolism. The tests that were run by the researchers showed that the stem cells that were encapsulated in the gel lasted longer while multiplying in number. These cells repair the tissue much more efficiently and marked higher growth production of cardiac