Biomedical Applications of Gut Stem Cells: Gaining First- Hand Insights for Developing Therapy for the Future

Understanding developmental biology holds the key to the future of medicine as virtually every disease can be viewed as a failure of development. Broadly put, developmental biologists seek to understand the biology of stem cells to answer the immense complexity in the developmental process. If we can decipher the molecular cues important for the maintenance of stem cells it will boost our ability to understand how these cues may go awry in disease states and create effective therapeutics to fight against them. Moreover, in the era of personalized medicine cell therapy using stem cells hold greatest prospect of changing the face of human diseases and alleviating suffering in the near future. Use of stem cell therapy now hold a promising impact to treat various degenerative and genetic diseases including certain type of cancers, neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases, restoration of sight, wound healing, cardiac diseases, liver diseases, metabolic disorders, spinal cord injury and bone disorders etc. There are currently a number of stem cell sources that are being investigated for use in biomedical applications, including adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells (ESCs), and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), wherein each presents its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Stem cells have the unique ability to continuously self-renew and differentiate into intermediate and mature cells of a variety of lineages. Though therapeutic potential of adult stem cells is the main focus of our research group; use of ESCs and iPSCs have also been regarded as promising candidates for future therapies considering their pluripotency and personalized therapeutic possibilities. Over the years gut stem cells has been used in analyzing adult stem cell behavior, identifying niche components, modelling pathogen-epithelia interactions, gene editing, disease modelling and orthotopic transplantation etc. The present review highlights the use of intestinal stem cells in various biomedical applications, and how it has helped us to understand many of the complex diseases including various genetic diseases, obesity and cancer and design effective therapy against them.