Using stem cells for clinical therapies is an idea still bathed in a futuristic glow, but one such treatment already has a history of success going back almost 40 years. Tens of thousands of patients treated with bone marrow transplants have shown that an infusion of healthy stem cells can regenerate a failing body part.
In most of these cases, the patients suffered from congenital blood or immune disorders, or their bone marrow had been damaged by cancer treatment. As a result, the haematopoietic stem cells in their marrow, which normally produce billions of blood and immune cells daily, needed replacing.
