14 DAY TRIAL // Though we are now consuming more drugs and chemicals than ever before, we know just as much about the broader health impacts they have on our bodies as we did decades ago. In order to rectify this error, a group of researchers is about to start conducting a new investigation on the issue.
Using a $2 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), bioengineers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the University of California in Berkeley (UCB) are setting out to analyze how exposure to stronger and stronger chemicals is affecting us.
No one is arguing the benefits that ingesting these substances has. Most of them are found in drugs that help keep us alive. The main issue here is that more and more complex chemicals have been developed over the past few years, and introduced in our medicine, than ever before.
However, broad studies on how exposure to so many foreign chemicals is affecting the human body have been lagging behind. Investigators at the RPI express their worry about this issue rather plainly, in a new statement.
“There is exceptionally little information on how chemicals in our drugs and also in the environment around us, including on the food we eat, impact some of the most important cells in our body: stem cells,” researchers say.
The main risk here, they add, is that we may be damaging essential regenerative functions in our bodies, therefore making ourselves more prone to develop numerous diseases. It could be that we make ourselves more susceptible to disorders or infections that the body would have otherwise handled.
Stem cells are absolutely critical for the replacement of dead and damaged tissues. They play a huge role in our recovery after traumatic accidents, and continue to serve this function throughout our lives.
There is currently nothing that medicine can do that comes even close to the capabilities of stem cells, researchers admit. As such, maintaining their health should be one of our main priorities. However, at this point, we don't even know whether we're harming them or not.
“When you look at the toxicity of drugs or other chemicals in our environment, you want to understand the response that all the different cells in the body have to that compound,” explains Jonathan Dordick, the director of the RPI Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.
“Most current toxicity screens used by manufacturers focus on a narrow range of cell types. Stem cells typically have not been included, although there is now a rapidly growing interest in the pharmaceutical industry in using such cells,” he explains.
“This greatly limits our understanding of what a new drug or chemical will have on the body. Vast amounts of money are wasted on the failed development process and, more importantly, people’s health could be unknowingly put at risk,” the expert concludes.