Regenerative medicine is an emerging field that is focused on utilizing medical advances and technologies to harness the potential of stem cells. This cutting edge approach to medicine involves the process of engineering or regenerating living cells, tissues and organs to repair or replace tissue damaged due to aging, disease, or congenital defects. The hope of regenerative medicine is that we can improve the quality of life for patients, and find ways to cure previously untreatable injuries and diseases.

This promising new field holds incredible potential for future therapies, and could change the course of chronic disease using stem cells. Therapies could include stem cell injections, transplantation of organs and tissues grown from a patient’s own stem cells, and regeneration by biologically active molecules that spur stem cells into action. Current estimates indicate that approximately 1 in 3 Americans could benefit from regenerative medicine.

As the population of industrial countries age, many patients will face serious complications such as diabetes, heart disease, urinary incontinence, blindness, deafness, kidney damage, and broken bones. Regenerative medicine holds the potential to solve the problems currently associated with drug therapies and transplant medicine. We could quickly be moving from using drugs to treat disease to using various forms of regenerative medicine to find cures. We may also be moving from facing organ donor shortage and tissue rejection to infusing a person’s own stem cells safely back into the patients’ own body without the fear of rejection by the person’s immune system. Research continues, with a tone of excitement coming from the scientific community. They know they are onto something big.

Every day, regenerative medicine is making great progress in the advancement of medicine. Once this new technology becomes widely used in clinical practice, the potential benefits to our health care system will be enormous. Our body uses stem cells as one way of repairing itself. There is convincing evidence that the stem cells that you chose to collect and store might be used in the future to help your body remain healthy.