What is Cell Therapy?
British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy
What is cell therapy? The human body contains over 200 different specialised cell types, such as muscle, bone or brain cells. These cells carry out specific functions within the body, necessary for the health of an organism. Injury, disease or ageing can lead to the loss of specialised cells from the body. In many cases, such loss is irreversible, meaning that the diseased or lost cells can no longer be replenished by healthy ones.
Cell therapy aims to introduce new, healthy cells into a patient’s body, to replace the diseased or missing ones. A challenge for this type of therapy is having enough cells for transplantation into a patient. This is because specialised cells, such as brain cells, are difficult to obtain from the human body.