[Ice-cream]

hey guys, just wondering whether u could give me a few ideas to help me with my assignment.
i'm really interested in stem cells and coz i'm doing studying pharmacy, i've been looking up info. to do with stem cells and how their development is going to affect pharmacists. i find that there doesn't seem to be anything beneficial to pharmacists in tissue engineering and other aspects of stem cells.
what do u guys think?

[savoy7]

Ice Cream,

From what I have read, not much out there from the viewpoint of the pharmacists.  Stems cells wouldn't provide the systemic effects of a drug.  

A good site that provides the most info on stems cells on the internet is:  http://stemcells.nih.gov/index.asp

It's a good site.  If there is any info on your subject, it will probably be listed there.

savoy

[Donaldson Tan]

perhaps pharmacist must develop new drugs to allow the body to accept artificially engineered tissues/organs. perhaps certain drugs can induce, limit or direct stem-cell development within the body. im just speculating.

[Brower]

Hi

New to board, but here is my 2cents.  

Stem cell research is about trying to replace organs / cells that no longer function the way it should, eg. your liver is no longer producing insulin, but if you get a stem cell from your body, and assuming you can transform this stem cell to whatever cell type you want, you can "make" a new liver for the sufferer.  What this would mean to a drug company selling insulin would be very obvious.  This is one example of how stem cell research would affect the drug industry, and a pharmicist I guess.  There is probably more to it than my simple example, but the logic would apply to other situations (eg. grow a healthy heart, and do away with drugs that lower blood pressure etc...).

[savoy7]

My liver has never made insulin, should I be concerned?

All joking aside, some good points.  The economics of drug companies may play a role at some point.

[Froggirl]

Speaking from a drug R&D perspective, we tend to test on oocytes that we get to express human genes in initial activity testing stages. Problem with this is that it doesn't represent human tissue in all its complexity all that well.

So while stem cells may be not so good for later toxicology/animal/clinical testing phases maybe it could be a useful addition to initial testing phases?

You would of course still need oocyte type testing for simple dose-response relationships but still it might tell you more about binding patterns to real tissue etc

[Garfield]

Stem cells would not have a geat impact on pharmacists. But it would have a  great impact on the makers of certian drugs. Because the stem cell or cells can replace organs. Drug companies wouldn't be able to sell as much of their product as they could in the past. if stem cell research was found more effective and was readly avalible to society and was a cure. Drug companies wouldnt be able to compete. Which would put the scientist that are trying to produce new drugs or cures for something that can be cloned out of a job but i dont see how it would effect Pharmacists  

[Donaldson Tan]

what exactly does pharmacist study?