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Studying stem cells will help us to understand how they transform into the great many of specialized cells. Some of the most serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, are due to problems that occur somewhere in this process. A better understanding of normal cell development will allow us to understand and perhaps correct the errors that cause these medical conditions.

Another potential application of stem cells is making cells and tissues for medical therapies. Today, cell technologies are often used to replace organs and tissues that are diseased or destroyed. Pluripotent stem cells offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat a myriad of diseases, conditions, and disabilities including Parkinson"s disease, Alzheimer"s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart and vascular disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. For more than 30 years, clinical medicine has been using haematopoietic stem cells for the purposes of blood-forming system regeneration and improvement of immune system of the recipient. Autologus stem cells are more and more frequently used in treatment of many diseases and it seems very probable that in the foreseeable future stem cells will be widely used for the purposes of regenerative medicine. Today, in the USA stem cells are used officially for the treatment of more then 170 diseases and pathologies.

Until very recently, stem cells had been derived only from bone marrow and peripheral blood. The extensive research has shown that umbilical cord blood can also be a very good source of stem cells which are less specialized and thus easily accepted by the recipient"s organism. When stem cells from umbilical cord blood are used for autologous transplant, there is no risk that the transplant would harm the recipient. Lately it has being reported the isolation of human amniotic fluid derived stem cells that express embryonic and adult stem cell markers. Umbilical cord blood and amniotic fluid can be collected with no risk or pain only during childbirth. Unlike deriving stem cells from embryos, these methods are also fully acceptable from the ethical and religious point of view.