Short lecture by Dr. Joy Kong (MD) explaining what stem cells are: primitive cells able to self-replicate and differentiate into specialized cells, responsible for embryonic development and local tissue replenishment. The talk also emphasizes that endogenous stem cell supply declines markedly with age (examples provided), and positions regenerative medicine as aiming to replenish or activate these cells to improve repair.
Questions this video answers
January 21, 2018.
A cell that has the ability to self-replicate and to differentiate into a more specialized cell.
About 1 in 10,000 cells.
About 1 in 100,000 cells.
About 1 in 400,000 cells.
Chapters
Doctor Joy Kong, and she will be educating us today on stem cells. Dr. Kong, exactly what are stem cells? Stem cells are primitive cells in our body. As a human, we actually all started out as a stem cell, which is the fertilized egg. So within that fertilized egg there is so much intelligence that's encoded in it that has ability to form the clusters of cells and orchestrating the formation of the embryo, the different organ systems, and eventually a full fledged person like you and me. So that's a pretty miraculous process. And if you want to ask me to define what a stem cell is, I would say it's a cell that has the ability to self replicate and has the ability to differentiate into a more specialized cell. So people don't understand that the stem cells, just like when we started from a fertilized egg, it's very potent, has a lot of potential, and as it goes down the evolutionary pathway, it loses some of its potential. So eventually there will be a stem cell that's in your organ system at different parts of your body. So those are the local stem cells. And when they divide, one of the cells that's the progeny will be the daughter cell that's identical to the initial cell, but the other one will become a specialized cell of that organ, let's say either liver cell or from your kidney, your skin. So they're able to replenish the local population of the cells, which means if you have an injury, you have some kind of damage, then your body can repair itself. So one thing people may not know is that our stem cells, the supply of our stem cells, decline drastically as we age. When we were born, we were born with a lot of stem cells. One in about 10,000 cells are stem cells. As we grow older and become a teenager, it becomes 1 in 100,000. So that's only 1 tenth. And then as you become a middle aged person, then it becomes 1 in 400,000. And when you become an 80 year old, that's only 1 in 2 million. So you can imagine, because there are just not many cells around, two to be able to replenish and rebuild your damaged tissue, then there's a decline, there's a slow decline as a result. So the regenerative medicine, the goal of it is to help replenish these cells or activate these cells so your body can repair better.
