What is the best type of stem cells?

A research project is about finding the best type of stem cells based on the following: availability, accessibility, life expectancy, types of people it will help, and the severity of the cases.
Jiayuan Si
Grade 10

Presentation

No video provided

Problem

Stem cells are cells with regenerative properties that can form into other cells like brain cells and heart muscle cells. With that, they are able to treat many diseases like leukemia through their stem cell therapies.Only some stem cells are only available and accessible for a short amount of time like bone marrow transplants, which only work if it is a match with the patient and the donor. With so many different types of stem cells, each one has its own special properties. To understand the types of stem cells which may be most helpful based on factors, like possible diseases it could treat, can be useful to the patient when they are figuring out the right course of treatment

Which harvested stem cell provides the best balance of availability, accessibility, and helps the most people with treatement of their potienally sereve disease?

Hypothesis: If the best balance of stem cells is determined by availability, accessibility, complications, people it will help, life expectancy, severity, then stem cells harvested from dental pulp may provide the best balance. This is the expected result because they are easy to harvest which makes them accessible and available. They also are known to treat a variety of cancers.

Method

These cells will be considered on availability, accessibility, life expectancy, possible complications from extracting the cells, the help of people it will help from receiving the cell, and the severity of the cases of the patients who require stem cells.

Availability: How available is the stem cell? For how long can the stem cell be achieved?

Accessibility: How accessible is the stem cell? Who is able to have access to these cells?

Complications: Are there any complications with harvesting the cells? If so, how serious is it?

People it will help: What type of disease can it treat? There will be a few diseases selected for further research.

Life Expectancy: For how long is the patient expected to live with the stem cell?

Severity: How severe are the cases that it will help?

 

 

Research

Bone Marrow:

- Hematopoietic stem cell: also known as blood stem cells. Cells that can develop into many types of blood cells like platelets.

-A bone marrow transplant procedure puts healthy blood stem cells into the patient’s body to swap the bone marrow with healthy ones instead 

Availability

- Types include: Autologous, allogeneic

- Autologous uses healthy blood cells from the patient's own body.

- allogeneic receives healthy blood cells from a donor. This donor has a close immune system match with the patient. It is done that way so the patient's immune system doesn't reject the blood cells. The donor is usually a family member. For those patients that don't have family members, they have to sign up and wait for a donor who has a match. A study done in Brazil shows the median wait time was 19 months. Wait times have variary based on location and finding a match.

Accessibility:

- Patient is put asleep while the procedure is being performed.

- In an allogeneic transplant, the donor needs a match. That on its own may be a difficult task. Most donors are family members but if none of them match, the patient has to register to a bank that may have and/or find them a match.

Life Expectancy:

- For acute leukemia, the rate is 23% for those diagnosed will live for at least 5 more years

-For hodgkin lymphoma, the rate is 85% for those diagnosed will live for at least 5 more years

Complications:

-are dependent on factors like age and overall health. 

-Complications during the procedure may include: organ damage, death, infertility, infections, soreness, graft versus host disease (allogeneic transplant only)

People it will help (diseases)

- This transplant can help people with diseases like: acute leukemia (blood cancer) and lymphoma

- Acute leukemia: most common cancer found in children. Leukemia cells divide rapidly and overflood the healthy blood cells like platelets. 

-Hodgkin lymphoma: cancer that affects the immune system. This disease happen when the lymphatic (immune) system’s healthy cells change and go out of control.

Severity:

- In acute leukemia, the cells divide so fastly that the patient will feel sick within weeks of these cells being created. Since it forms at such a rapid rate, this type does require immediate treatment. In the United States, it is the 10th most common cancer.

-For hodgkin’s lymphoma, the severity depends on what stage it is in. For example, stages 1 and 2 may not be as severe as ones on stages 3 and 4.

 

Umbilical Cord: 

- Hematopoietic stem cell: also known as blood stem cells. Cells that can develop into many types of blood cells like platelets.

-Right after a baby is born, the leftover cord blood after it is cut is collected

- decreased amount of stem cells available in comparison to bone marrow transplants

- more tolerant of tissue mismatch between cell and patient

Availability

- Harvested from the blood after a baby is born

-about 385 000 babies are born a day and most hospitals offer cord blood donation

Accessibility

-Like mentioned earlier, lots of people give birth daily and so even if a quarter of them donate, there would be 96 250 people’s cord blood collected everyday

-there are lots of public cord blood banks like CReATe available for the public

-there are also private banks that are only accessible by family members. Private banks can be costly.

Life Expectancy

- patients who have sickle cell disease and are insured are likely to live for about 52.6 years.

-Overall, 89% women in Canada with breast cancer are expected to life for at least 5 more years

Complications

- collecting the cord blood does not endanger the baby or the mother because the blood is collected after the cord has been cut.

People it will help:

- sickle cell disease and breast cancer are just some of the treatable diseases with cord blood

-Sickle cell disease: a genetic blood disease. It affects the shape of a red blood cell so that they become rigid and sticky, decreasing the blood flow. Symptoms of this disease are usually quite early at around 6 months of age.

Breast cancer: cancer that starts in the cells of the breast tissue when they form tumors.This cancer does not only apply for females, anyone born with breast tissue could get breast cancer.

Severity:

-Breast cancer advancements have been increasing so it is easier to spot it early. Catching it early can prevent it from reaching later stages that makes it difficult to overcome. With that mentioned, stage stage means that the cancer has spread onto other parts of the body. This of course makes it a more serious issue.

- In sickle cell disease, those with severe brain damage and chronic pain are considered the most severe.

 

Dental Pulp (Baby Teeth):

- Mesenchymal stem cells: Stem cells that can separate into many other cell types like muscle (myocytes) and fat cells (adipocytes)

- Canadidiate for allogeneic transplant without needing the donor to be a match

Availability

- must be extracted when the tooth falls out, teeth stored cannot be used. Based on this information, teeth start falling out at around 6 years and the last one should fall out at 12 years old. This leaves an approximate 6 year time frame. Everyone's teeth are different so this timeline may change.

Accessibility

- no surgical procedure necessary to get the dental pulp

- the dental pulp can be frozen to preserve the stem cells

Complications:

-there are little complications when extracting this stem cell because over time the loose tooth has its roots and nerves dying. 

-If tooth is extracted in a procedure, the patient may experience soreness or an inflection. 

People it can help:

-- Can help treat periodontal disease (also called chronic infectious disease)

- Periodontal disease: (Gum disease) in 2018, it was estimated that 90% of the world have this disease. It starts with an inflection on one’s gum and overtime can spread to the bones that support the teeth.

Life expectancy:

-there are a lot of treatable methods to gum disease so one's life is expected live the way it would normally after the procedure.

Severity:

-there are a lot of treatable methods to gum disease such as good oral hygenie so serious cases are really rare and preventable

 

 

Data

 

Availability

(High is ideal)

Accessibility

(High is ideal)

Complications

(Low is ideal)

People it will help

(High is ideal)

Life expectancy

(Low is ideal)

Severity

(Low is ideal)

Bone Marrow

Moderate

Moderate

High-moderate

High

Moderate

High

Umbilical Cord

High

High

Low

High

High

Moderate

Dental Pulp

High

High

Low

Low

High

Low

 

Life expectancy and Severity: in these catergories, low is ideal because it shows that it can help out very serious cases.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it seems that both umbilical cord and dental pulp stems have the best balance of availability, accessibility, and can treat those with severe disease. This is because they tied for the ideal level for each category from the data chart. The umbilical cord is available after the cord is cut and both the mother and baby are not harmed during this process. Stem cells from the cord can later treat diseases like breast cancer and sickle cell disease, both to which can expect a higher survival rate and reach a high level of severity. Dental pulp stem cells are taken from baby teeth immediately after they fall out so they have high accessibility and availability. Gum disease is one of the disease that it can treat and it is a less severe disease.

 

Citations

Acknowledgement

This project took a lot of brainstroming to do and could not be done without the massive help of others. First and foremost, I would like to thank my teachers Ms. Fan and Ms. Mckeown for orginaizatiing this club at my school. Secondly, I would like to thank the many published works I used for my reseach. Big shoutout to Mayoclinc, ScienceDirect and Cleveland Clinic for the amazing information I from from these sites. I would also like to thank my family for supporting me every step of the way, even if they had to put up with my struggles. Lastly I want to thank the Calgary Youth Science Fair for such a educational and exciting experience.