Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
daily insulin injections. Criticisms of this trial include that recipients
of the treatment were not followed for a sufficient length of time
after the trial to determine a true level of effectiveness and that there
was insufficient data to determine exactly how the stem cell treatment
had worked (Skyler, 2007). Nevertheless, further research into the
effectiveness of adult stem cell treatments for Type 1 diabetes is
continuing. The commercial possibilities are yet to unfold.
4.1
A brief history of adult stem cell technologies
Adult stem cell technologies have a long history. They are part of a
continuum of research in the life sciences that began more than a
hundred years ago with the first attempts to cultivate tissues outside
the body of an animal. Throughout the twentieth century incremental
developments in tissue culturing techniques have resulted in the
widespread use of tissues grown
in vitro
for diagnostic purposes since
at least the 1940s. Emphasizing the role that living tissues play in the
life sciences, one commentator writes: 'Cells from all manner of
organisms, from plants to insects to animals to humans, constitute a
substantial biomass present in the laboratories of the world, a living
material base for contemporary life sciences' (Landecker, 2007: 2).
The history of
in vitro
tissue growth begins in the early twentieth
century when American embryologist Ross Harrison began tinkering
with nerve cells in order to clarify an ongoing dispute in the history
of embryology about how these cells develop (Landecker, 2007:
29-31). Harrison's experiments were a revolutionary moment in the
history of the life sciences for a number of reasons (Landecker,
2007). Not only did he solve the debate about the development of
nerve cells, Harrison also established a technique for growing cells
outside the body that had not been tried before: a technique,
moreover, that heralded the start of contemporary tissue culturing
(Landecker, 2007).
Over the following four decades, these techniques continued to
develop. Researchers began experimenting with different tissues in
the laboratory and studying the best methods of sustaining them
in vitro
(Landecker, 2007)
.
However, it was not until 1948 that the
