Stem cells are single cells with two unique qualities–they can make endless copies of themselves and they can mature into a variety of specialized cells. These qualities make them promising new tools in medicine, allowing patients to receive needed cells or tissues or have diseased cells or tissues replaced with healthy ones.

Grown in the lab, genetically repaired if needed and coaxed to become a specific tissue, stem cells could allow doctors to patch a scarred heart, reawaken damaged nerves or reboot an immune system incapable of fighting infection. Stem cells are also very valuable to scientists in understanding human disease.

Children’s Hospital Boston believes that stem cell research holds extraordinary promise for the children we treat and for countless others around the world. The mission of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston is to explore, understand, and translate this promise into clinical therapies and treatments.

There are two general types of stem cells, both of which are being studied at Children’s.

• Pluripotent stem cells are “master cells.” They’re able to make cells from all three basic body layers, so they can potentially produce any cell or tissue the body needs to repair itself. They include embryonic stem cells, made from embryos, and induced pluripotent stem cells, which closely resemble embryonic stem cells and are created through genetic reprogramming.

• Adult stem cells are specialized stem cells that give rise to one or more specific cells or tissues.

Read about both to learn about where they come from, their importance in medicine, and what our scientists are doing.

Spotlight

• The promise of regenerative medicine

  A fall 2009 Boston Globe magazine article surveys the state of the art of stem cell research and offers a glimpse of the future.

• New embryonic stem cell lines open to research

  April 28, 2010: The National Institutes of Health approves an additional 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for federal funding, including nine lines that had never before been eligible for federal funding and four old lines that had been eligible under the Bush administration.

• Induced pluripotent stem cells: 2008 Breakthrough of the Year

  Children’s Hospital Boston was one of the first three centers to reprogram skin cells into cells that are much like embryonic stem cell (learn more about this breakthrough in Science). In addition, Children’s Hospital Boston announced the creation of iPS cells from patients with 10 different diseases and established a stem cell repository for all scientists to use, managed by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.