In short, biologists have all sorts of ideas about how to use stem cell technology to cure diseases, and the process is complex. It’s still early to think about using stem cell technology to cure diseases ● It often takes a decade or even decades of figuring out how to move a new discovery from the lab to the market. Products that keep up with the latest technological discoveries are most likely to be fakes. A financial publication recently did a cover story on a company engaged in stem cell therapy, which caused an online furor. Several science and technology journalists criticized the publication for promoting a fraudulent company because all of the marketing of stem cell therapy to date has been false advertising. The journalists and editors, on the other hand, argued that they were only objectively reporting on the company’s start-up and not promoting its stem cell therapy. Many of you watching this controversy may not know what stem cells are, or even the correct pronunciation of the word “stem”, although you often see advertisements and reports on this subject. Let’s learn a little bit about stem cells. The human body is not made up of one kind of cells, but more than 200 kinds of cells, such as nerve cells, skin cells, red blood cells and so on. Different cells are responsible for different functions, but all of these cells develop from one cell, the fertilized egg. During the development of a fertilized egg, the number of cells is not only expanded by continuous division, but also the number of cells is increased by continuous differentiation. Stem cells are cells that are undifferentiated and therefore have the potential to differentiate into different types of cells, and “stem” means “backbone” that can give rise to branches. Stem cells are also found in adults and are distributed in the bone marrow, blood, brain, pancreas, skeletal muscle, dental pulp, etc. The most abundant are hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow and blood. These adult stem cells have been extensively studied and have medical applications. However, compared to embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are very scarce and difficult to isolate and purify. Moreover, the fate of adult stem cells is basically determined, for example, the mission of hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow in the in vivo environment is to differentiate into various blood cells. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, are “totipotent”. Recently, it has been discovered that adult stem cells are also plastic and can be induced to differentiate into other cell types under certain conditions, and even have the same totipotency as embryonic stem cells. Because of their ability to differentiate into other cells, research on stem cells holds promise for the treatment of many chronic diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, chronic heart disease, and even cancer. A current focus of research is the use of stem cells to generate nerve cells to repair damaged nervous systems. Neurological diseases such as paraplegia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease are caused by damaged or malfunctioning nerve cells, which are difficult to regenerate and can only be replenished by generating new nerve cells from stem cells in vitro. Another major direction is to use stem cells to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic tissue, which, if transplanted into the body, could cure diabetes. But there are still many problems to be solved for these ideas to become reality. If the stem cells used for treatment come from someone else, there is a risk of rejection when transplanted into the patient, leading to failure of the procedure. If the stem cells are from the patient’s own body (e.g., from adult stem cells), they will not cause rejection, but if they are simply injected back into the body and their differentiation and growth are not controlled, they may grow tumors and lead to cancer. Even if the stem cells have first been induced to differentiate into the desired cell type in vitro, there is uncertainty as to whether they will reach the desired site and whether their growth will be controlled when injected into the body. In 2005, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, injected neurological stem cells isolated and cultured from fetal brains into paraplegic rats and found that the stem cells migrated to the site of spinal injury in the rats, where they formed new neurons and oligodendrocytes, and the paraplegic rats resumed walking. Based on the results, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for human clinical trials in 2009. In October 2010, a young man who had been paraplegic in a car accident became the first test subject, and was injected with 2 million oligodendrocyte precursors from embryonic stem cells. But a year later, the trial team announced that the clinical trial had been terminated for financial reasons. None of the stem cell treatments have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The stem cell therapies that are blooming in China have not been tested in animal and human clinical trials at all, and are being used directly for clinical treatment for purely profit-making purposes. Some of these stem cell treatments are just a simple scam. For example, CCTV once exposed a stem cell beauty scam, claiming that if you take an injection made from embryonic stem cells, you can be 10 to 15 years younger. Some reporters also did an investigation on local beauty salons and found that many beauty salons have various stem cell beauty programs and sell products such as stem cell oral solution and serum. None of these products can really contain stem cells because isolating and culturing human stem cells is much more difficult than isolating and culturing ordinary cells, which is still a cutting-edge technology for experimental research only, and no institution has the ability to produce them commercially on a large scale yet. Moreover, only live stem cells are useful, once they are made into injections and oral solutions, they become dead cells and no longer have the characteristics of stem cells, so even if these products are really made of stem cells, they have become waste. Even if these products really contain active stem cells, the injection or oral administration of stem cells will not have any effect. Direct injection of stem cells can cause harmful rejection and allergic reactions in the body, and eating stem cells can even digest them. In short, these so-called stem cell preparations cannot really contain stem cells, and judging from the side effect symptoms that some consumers have experienced after using these products, their real ingredients may be some kind of hormones. Some of the stem cell treatments available in the Chinese market are a bit more complicated and confusing. There are several Chinese hospitals that claim to be treating paraplegics with stem cells, claiming to have some effect, and even attracting patients from abroad to China to receive treatment. However, U.S. doctors have evaluated some American patients who have been treated with stem cells in China and found that there is no efficacy, and that some patients feel improvement after receiving the treatment, possibly due to psychological suggestion or other surgical factors unrelated to stem cells. This type of treatment is all about injecting stem cells from others directly into the body without inducing and differentiating the stem cells in vitro, which has the risk of rejection and carcinogenesis. In conclusion, biologists have various ideas on how to use stem cell technology to cure diseases, and the process is complicated. It is still early to think about using stem cell technology to cure diseases. The so-called stem cell therapy that is currently marketed is a scam. The average person only hears about stem cells in the media and vaguely knows that it is a good thing, but how many people really understand what it is all about? With the bombardment of advertisements, it is easier to be tempted. So there is no worry that there is no market for such a scam. To avoid being cheated by these high-tech signboard scams, we need to grasp this bit of common sense: a new discovery to move from the laboratory to the market, it often takes more than a decade or even decades of figuring out. Those products that keep up with the latest technological discoveries are most likely to be fakes.