Question: What can adult stem cells be used for?
About the article "Stem cell", section "Adult".

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Adult stem cells, also called somatic (from Greek Σωματικóς, "of the body") stem cells, are stem cells which maintain and repair the tissue in which they are found.
They can be found in children, as well as adults.
Pluripotent adult stem cells are rare and generally small in number, but they can be found in umbilical cord blood and other tissues.
Bone marrow is a rich source of adult stem cells, which have been used in treating several conditions including spinal cord injury, liver cirrhosis, chronic limb ischemia and endstage heart failure.
The quantity of bone marrow stem cells declines with age and is greater in males than females during reproductive years.
Much adult stem cell research to date has aimed to characterize their potency and self-renewal capabilities.
In mice, pluripotent stem cells are directly generated from adult fibroblast cultures.
However, mice do not live long with stem cell organs.
Most adult stem cells are lineage-restricted (multipotent) and are generally referred to by their tissue origin (mesenchymal stem cell, adipose-derived stem cell, endothelial stem cell, dental pulp stem cell, etc.
Adult stem cell treatments have been successfully used for many years to treat leukemia and related bone/blood cancers through bone marrow transplants.
Adult stem cells are also used in veterinary medicine to treat tendon and ligament injuries in horses.
The use of adult stem cells in research and therapy is not as controversial as the use of embryonic stem cells, because the production of adult stem cells does not require the destruction of an embryo.
Additionally, in instances where adult stem cells are obtained from the intended recipient (an autograft), the risk of rejection is essentially non-existent.
Consequently, more US government funding is being provided for adult stem cell research.
The demand for treatments on diseases has sparked a controversy among those involved with stem cell research.
Since stem cells have the ability to differentiate into any type of cell, they offer something in the development of medical treatments for a wide range of conditions.
Treatments that have been proposed include treatment for physical trauma, degenerative conditions, and genetic diseases (in combination with gene therapy).
The hope for a treatment for myelomalacia lies in the hands of stem cell research.
Further treatments using stem cells could potentially be developed thanks to their ability to repair extensive tissue damage.
Much success and potential has been demonstrated from research using adult stem cells.
There are no approved treatments or human trials using embryonic stem cells.
Nevertheless, some researchers are of the opinion that the differentiation potential of embryonic stem cells is broader than most adult stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells can become all cell types of the body because they are Totipotent.
Adult stem cells are generally limited to differentiating into different cell types of their tissue of origin.
However, some evidence suggests that adult stem cell plasticity may exist, increasing the number of cell types a given adult stem cell can become.
In addition, embryonic stem cells are considered more useful for nervous system therapies, because researchers have struggled to identify and isolate from adult tissues.
Embryonic stem cells, however, might be rejected by the immune system - a problem which wouldn't occur if the patient received his or her own stem cells.
Medical scientists believe that these stem cell therapies have the ability to change the treatment of human diseases tremendously.
Stem cell therapies are currently being conducted in patients with bone marrow transplants, used to treat leukemia.
The future use of this treatment looks to be able to treat diseases such as cancer, spinal cord injury, Lou Gehrig's disease, multiple sclerosis, and a number of other muscular conditions. 
These are not adult stem cells, but rather adult cells (e.g.
epithelial cells) reprogrammed to give rise to pluripotent capabilities.
Using genetic reprogramming with protein transcription factors, pluripotent stem cells equivalent to embryonic stem cells have been derived from human adult skin tissue.
Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University used the transcription factors Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4 in their experiments on cells from human faces.
Junying Yu, James Thomson, and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison used a different set of factors, Oct4, Sox2, Nanog and Lin28, and carried out their experiments using cells from human foreskin.
As a result of the success of these experiments, Ian Wilmut, who helped create the first cloned animal Dolly the Sheep, has announced that he will abandon somatic cell nuclear transfer as an avenue of research.
Frozen blood samples can be used as a source of induced pluripotent stem cells, opening a new avenue for obtaining the valued cells. 
Adult stem cells are not able to proliferate and differentiate as effectively "in vitro" as they are able to "in vivo".
Adult stem cells can come from many different tissue locations, but it is difficult to isolate them because they are defined by behavior and not surface markers.
A method has yet to be developed for clearly distinguishing between stem cells and the differentiated cells surrounding them.
However, surface markers can still be used to a certain extent to remove most of the unwanted differentiated cells.
Stem cell plasticity is the ability to differentiate across embryonic germ line boundaries.
Though, the presence of plasticity has been hotly contested.
Some claim that plasticity is caused by heterogeneity among the cells or cell fusion events.
Currently, cells can be differentiated across cell lines with yields ranging from 10% to 90% depending on techniques used.
More studies need to be done in order to standardize the yield with transdifferentiation.
Transdifferentiation of multipotent stem cells is a potential means for obtaining stem cells that are not available or not easily obtained in the adult. 
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are pluripotent cells found in multiple human adult tissues including bone marrow, synovial tissues, and adipose tissues.
Since they are derived from the mesoderm, they have been shown to differentiate into bone, cartilage, muscle, and adipose tissue.
MSCs from embryonic sources have shown promise scientifically while creating significant controversy.
As a result, many researchers have focused on adult stem cells [http://www.spinalinjuryfoundation.org/MSC/Stem%20Cell%20Success%20Case%20studies.htm], or stem cells isolated from adult humans that can be transplanted into damaged tissue.
Because of their multi-potent capabilities, mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) lineages have been used successfully in animal models to regenerate articular cartilage and in human models to regenerate bone.
Recent research demonstrates that articular cartilage may be able to be repaired via percutaneous introduction of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC’s).