Stem cell therapy comes with its own set of challenges despite being a revolutionary discovery in modern healthcare. As we know, AI has several applications in the deep and diverse field of healthcare. So, stem cell AI’s incredible capabilities can overcome those challenges and truly improve stem cell therapy in hospitals.
Stem cell therapy, or regenerative cell therapy, is an operation that attempts to repair or replace diseased, dysfunctional or ruptured tissues in the body using stem cells. Stem cell therapy is an evolution of organ transplantation. Instead of whole organs, this treatment uses cells that are easier to create or obtain—unlike organs, which are generally in short supply in hospitals.
The stem cells are created in a lab for the purpose of using them for therapy. The stem cell procedure is unique as the cells can be taken from one part of the body and manipulated before being slotted into another with surgery. This manipulation is also possible if the cells of one person are used in another one (naturally, preceded by a series of compatibility checks before the operation).
So, where does AI fit into this? As we know, AI has several applications in the field of healthcare already, of which stem cell therapy is among the most recent. Stem cell therapy, being still fairly new, may need AI’s data processing and intuitive abilities to develop further.
Some of the ways in which stem cell AI can enhance stem cell therapy are:
Spotting Healthy Stem Cells Accurately and Quickly
Researchers in the Tokyo Medical and Dental University have used AI to formulate a medical procedure to boost the overall speed and efficiency of stem cell therapy. The find is a huge breakthrough as it allows healthcare experts and surgeons to move away from the dated procedures involving the assessment of stem cell quality by manually looking at each of them (!) before moving forward with subsequent steps in the overall operation.
The deep learning-based adaptation of the old stem cell therapy uses a vast library of sample images to assist AI with correctly identifying the defects that could be found in individual stem cells. The system, named DeepACT, can perform quality control of keratinocyte stem cells found in humans to make the therapy quicker and less error-ridden.
Using CRISPR and AI to Improve Stem Cell Control
Healthcare researchers from the Gladstone Institute and Boston University (BU) turned to machine learning and AI to discover a way to boost the quality of stem cell therapy. Using a gene-editing system named CRISPR-Cas9 and machine learning, the experts found greater knowledge about controlling the organization of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSCs) that play a part in stem cell treatments. Controlling and understanding the behavior of stem cells is vital as it helps healthcare experts to make improvements in therapy methods in the future.
Stem cell therapy can be the solution to many questions for which healthcare previously had a limited number of answers. Coupled with stem cell AI, the treatment promises to get increasingly involved in other similar surgeries and treatments, thereby creating intriguing possibilities for the future of healthcare.
