Question: Can we use other animal cells that regenerate to cure cancer?

Steven Street answered on 15 Nov 2016:

Hi Riyad,

A good question! I shall try to answer it as best as i can! So firstly, when you talk about regenerative cells, you are most likely referring to stem cells. These are undifferentiated cells that are capable of transforming into many different types of cells. As far as I’m aware, most of this research is focused on understanding how cancer cells and cancer stem cells grow and divide so rapidly, so that we can target it and stop it. Stem cells are involved in the immune system, so sometimes in cancer treatments stem cell therapy is used in conjunction with high dosage chemotherapy to repair the damage chemo does to your immune system.

Since all cell types are very different, it wouldn’t be possible to use animal cells on humans without significant genetic engineering and modification to make them compatible with humans. I’m not too sure how much regenerative medicine can be used to treat cancer (only learn about it), as I think that you would still have to kill the cancerous cells one way or another, not just replace them! If you could get the stem cells to differentiate into immune cells capable of killing cancer cells…. then you could be onto something! If that was the case, you would need a source of stem cells , so who knows!

Hopefully your happy with that answer? 🙂
Steve