Question: How would you heal a patient with heart disease fixable with stem cells? As in would you implant the stem cells into the patient or grow out side first?

Michael Schneider answered on 17 Nov 2015:

Terrific question. For now, most stem cell treatments use cells taken from the patient himself or herself. Most of these can’t be given back to the patient until grown in the laboratory for days (cells from bone marrow) or months (cells from the heart, or cells from the skin that are turned into heart muscle cells). So, implanting the cells comes later. To have cells available more immediately, just after the time of a heart attack, it would be necessary to show that cells from others can be given as safely (like blood is, from a blood bank).