February 18, 2019 at 7:05 am
Joyce, here is a short answer to your question: “What effect will stem cells have on stroke?”
It has long been assumed that stroke or traumatic brain injuries lead to permanent damages to our brains because our brain circuits were destroyed by the injury.
In 2016, the Stanford team mentioned above found the assumption simply not true.
A stroke or traumatic brain injury does not destroy the brain circuit per se. It actually turns the circuits dormant.
And a dormant brain circuit can be awakened by adult stem cells injected into the injured area.
In its test, the Stanford team extracted some bone marrow from the thigh of each survivor, and with the help of SanBio, turned the bone marrow into adult stem cells. Then they injected the adult stem cells back into each survivor’s own brain.
Very quickly they observed miraculous improvement in the functions of these survivors.
By studying the results further, they found actually all the stem cells died within 60 days. However, before they died, stem cells released a very potent form of growth factors (a special form of protein) that awaken the dormant brain circuits. This triggered a very rapid recovery.
While the Stanford team was doing its trial, a team in UCLA found that adult stem cells significantly reduced the inflammation of the injured area before they died. The UCLA team believes inflammation is a primary reason that injured brains could not effectively recover their lost functions via neuroplasticity.