Your Stem Cells Or Someone Else's?
An interesting view on the near future of stem cell transplant therapies from Medical News Today: "Tricking the body's immune system into ignoring stem cells will be the key to successful stem cell transplants ... Our recent experiments suggest that we could use regulatory cells to stop the immune system responding to foreign transplants, whilst leaving the rest of the immune system intact ... Cloning stem cells using a patient's own cells is another option for preventing the rejection of stem cell transplants. ... However, the cost and intricate nature of this procedure means that it may not prove to be a practical option for widespread use." This is from someone working on the immune system of course; it seems to me that the majority of recent successful trials and studies have used the patient's own stem cells.
Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=30395