Stem Cells for Neck and Back Pain
June 26, 2018 | Terry Sharrer
For elders, deteriorating spinal discs are literally a pain in the neck and back. For the medical insurance industry, that pain costs close to $100b. Addressing this concern, researchers at Washington University of St. Louis have developed a cell culture method that begins with human induced pluripotent stem cells and advances them, if a first stage, to become embryonic notochord cells, and then, in a second stage, furthers them to become disc-like cells (i.e. nucleus pulposus) in vitro. While these cells have not yet been clinically tested, the importance for human medicine is obvious. MORE
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