Man believed to be offering stem-cell therapy without a license
Undercover agents arrested a man claiming to be a doctor who was providing stem-cell treatments for injured athletes. Authorities say the man has no medical professional licenses.
By: WPBF 25 News
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Man believed to be offering stem-cell therapy without a license - Video
Low back disc pain 3 months after stem cell therapy by Dr Harry Adelson
Brian discusses his results from the bone marrow stem cell injection into his lumbar discs performed by Dr Harry Adelson http://www.docereclinics.com.
By: Harry Adelson, N.D.
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Low back disc pain 3 months after stem cell therapy by Dr Harry Adelson - Video
People who received the world's first stem cell treatment for strokes have shown measurable reductions in disability and handicap a year after the injection into their damaged brains.
Some can move limbs and manage everyday tasks that were impossible before they received an injection of neural progenitor stem cells, which were clones of cells originally taken from the cortex of a donated fetus.
Apart from physical rehabilitation, there are few treatments for people left severely disabled by a stroke. Demand for more options is high, with 800,000 new cases each year in the US and 150,000 in the UK.
"We're encouraged, and it's a nice progressive piece of news," says Michael Hunt, the chief executive officer of ReNeuron, the company in Guildford, UK, that developed the treatment. "We must be circumspect, but we are seeing what seems to be a general trend towards improvement in a disparate group of patients," he says.
ReNeuron presented its latest results on the first 11 patients on 7 May in Nice, France, at the 23rd European Stroke Conference. They build on interim findings released last year.
The patients in the PISCES trial (Pilot Investigation of Stem Cells in Stroke) had all suffered their strokes at least six months before treatment and were all chosen because their symptoms had plateaued, making any improvements more likely to be the result of treatment.
There were improvements in median scores on all five scales used to measure the patients' recovery.
On a score that measures quality of life from 0 to 100, patients began with a median score of 45, but within a year this had risen by 18 points, a 40 per cent improvement.
Rankin Scores, which grade disability and handicap from healthy (0) to dead (6) improved from a median of 3 at the start to 2 for four of the patients, although the rest remained the same. "That's equivalent to taking a patient down a whole level of dependency, and equates to a 20 per cent improvement," says Hunt. Scores on all the other three scales were higher at 12 than at three months, suggesting the improvements were continuing.
The company is now actively recruiting for a second, larger trial in 41 people. They will be recruited sooner after their strokes within two to three months in the hope that earlier treatment will prevent some of the irreversible scarring. It will also deploy a harder but more objective measure of improvement in which patients have to try lifting a wooden block onto a platform. Hunt expects full results by the end of 2015.
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First stem cell trial for stroke shows lasting benefits
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Carrie Yokley and her family stayed at the Ronald McDonald House in Nashville while her son Ryan received lifesaving treatment.
On Friday afternoon, Yokley said her prayers were answered. Doctorssaid her sons stem cell transplant was a success, curing him of two diseases, Burton's and Crohn's.
She said that is the best Mothers Day gift she could have hoped for.
You think your kids are the best gift you can get, but then you get a gift like this, [he gets] a second chance to be a little boy, said Yokley.
Carrie Yokley will celebrate Mothers Day at the Ronald McDonald House, along with 32 other mothers going through a similar experience.
It's just a nice time for them to put aside the worries they have about their child's illness and celebrate being a mother and getting to be with their children, said Heather Powell, with the Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Ryan cannot be around other people until his immune system improves. Yokley said Ryan felt bad that he could not do more with his mother on the special day.
She assured him, this Mothers Day she received everything she wanted.
I said we're together, I have you all, that's the best Mother's Day present ever, said Yokley.
The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Nashville provides a home away from home for families of critically ill children receiving care at Nashville area hospitals.
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Son's successful stem cell transplant best Mother's Day present
Jacksonville, FL (PRWEB) May 09, 2014
Tom McManus, former professional football player with the Jacksonville Jaguars is teaming up with SmartChoice Stem Cell Institute as a spokesperson. He and SmartChoice hope that the alliance will promote awareness of benefits and success of Adult Stem Cell procedures as non-surgical treatment for sports injuries, arthritis, joint and back pain.
McManus, who was a middle linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, is a firm believer in the treatment. I think SmartChoice procedures are a great alternative to invasive surgery and want to let people know that this option exists in Jacksonville. Many athletes have been going to Germany for these types of treatments, and now they dont have to leave the United States.
SmartChoice Stem Cell Institute, SmartChoiceStemCell.com, located in Jacksonville, Florida, was founded by Dr. Hardesh Garg, M.D. Dr. G, as he is affectionately referred by his patients, has been practicing medicine for over 20 years but has focused his medical practice on Adult Stem Cells for almost five years. Regenerative Medicine and Adult Stem Cell treatments are the newest alternative to invasive orthopedic surgeries for joint problems and sports injuries. This is the future and we are honored to have Tom as our spokesperson as we move forward in this exciting medical field.
SmartChoice Adult Stem Cell Procedures use adult stem cells from a patients own body, harvested and injected in a same-day office procedure to regenerate and rejuvenate injured cells. These procedures are helpful not only for sports injuries, but also for arthritis and other joint and back problems.
Dr. Garg and McManus hope that this partnership will increase public awareness of SmartChoice Adult Stem Cell procedures. SmartChoice continues to help patients with a variety of sports injuries. McManus will use his NFL and public speaking experience to help Dr. Garg treat athletes with sports injuries, both amateur and professional, especially the ever-growing golf community in Florida and other states.
For more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Dr. Garg, please visit SmartChoiceStemCell.com or call Brooke Williams, Chief Clinical Consultant, at 904-997-6100 or email Brooke at consultant(at)smartchoicestemcell(dot)com
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Former Professional Football Player to Be a Spokesperson for Smartchoice Stem Cell Institute to Promote Adult Stem ...
Poway, California (PRWEB) May 08, 2014
Vet-Stem, Inc., announced that a major patent has been issued directly to Vet-Stem for New Zealand. This patent covers methods for extracting/preparing and using adipose tissue-derived stem cells for preventing or treating diseases in any mammal, including humans. This patent will provide coverage for the ongoing commercial and development programs at Vet-Stem and for its licensees in Australasia. This patent may be available for licensing for human applications to other companies interested in working in this field.
Of particular interest is the application to the rapidly evolving field of Regenerative Sports Medicine. This patent covers the preparation methods and use of adipose-derived stem cells in treating any type of disease, but specifically covers the use in injuries or diseases of the musculoskeletal system such as tendon tears, ligament injury and osteoarthritis.
This new patent issued to Vet-Stem adds to the many other patents in the Vet-Stem portfolio that cover methods of preparing and using regenerative cells from adipose. Vet-Stem has already had a similar patent issue in the EU and applications are pending in the US and other countries. In addition to these owned patents, Vet-Stem has exclusive worldwide rights to a portfolio of patents (over 50 issued and 70 pending patents) from Artecel, Inc. (including University of Pittsburgh patents) and the University of California, which further strengthens the companys intellectual property position in this rapidly developing field.
As the first company in the world to offer fat derived stem cell services for veterinary use, Vet-Stem has rapidly developed the market, providing treatments to over 10,000 horses, dogs, cat and exotic species. Intellectual property rights can be confusing in a rapidly developing market with evolving technology, said Bob Harman, DVM, MPVM, CEO of Vet-Stem. We needed to do everything possible to protect the market that we are creating in regenerative veterinary medicine and to ensure that the value of the company is optimized. The value of this technology has increased greatly since the founding of the company in 2002 as the business model, therapeutic activity of the cells, and ease of tissue collection have all been demonstrated.
About Vet-Stem, Inc. Vet-Stem, Inc. was formed in 2002 to bring regenerative medicine to the veterinary profession. The privately held company is working to develop therapies in veterinary medicine that apply regenerative technologies while utilizing the natural healing properties inherent in all animals. As the first company in the United States to provide an adipose-derived stem cell service to veterinarians for their patients, Vet-Stem, Inc. pioneered the use of regenerative stem cells in veterinary medicine. The company holds exclusive licenses to over 50 patents including world-wide veterinary rights for use of adipose derived stem cells. In the last decade over 10,000 animals have been treated using Vet-Stem, Inc.s services, and Vet-Stem is actively investigating stem cell therapy for immune-mediated and inflammatory disease, as well as organ disease and failure. For more on Vet-Stem, Inc. and Veterinary Regenerative Medicine visit http://www.vet-stem.com or call 858-748-2004.
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New Vet-Stem Patent for Stem Cells Covers Sports Medicine Applications
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Newswise (Lebanon, NH, 5/8/14) Researchers at Dartmouths Norris Cotton Cancer Center have published results from a study Cell Reports that discovers a new mechanism that distinguishes normal blood stem cells from blood cancers.
These findings constitute a significant advance toward the goal of killing leukemia cells without harming the bodys normal blood stem cells which are often damaged by chemotherapy, said Patricia Ernst, PhD, co-director of the Cancer Mechanisms Program of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center and an associate professor in Genetics at Geisel School of Medicine.
The study focused on a pathway regulated by a gene called MLL1 (for Mixed Lineage Leukemia). Ernst served as principal investigator; Bibhu Mishra, PhD, as lead author.
When the MLL1 gene is damaged, it can cause leukemia, which is a cancer of the blood, often occurring in very young patients. Researchers found that the normal version of the gene controls many other genes in a manner that maintains the production of blood cells.
This control becomes chaotic when the gene is damaged or broken and that causes the normal blood cells to turn into leukemia, said Ernst.
The researchers showed that the normal gene acts with a partner gene called MOF that adds small acetyl chemical modification around the genes that it controls. The acetyl modification acts as a switch to turn genes on. When this function is disrupted, MLL1 cannot maintain normal blood stem cells.
The researchers also found that a gene called Sirtuin1 (more commonly known for controlling longevity) works against MLL1 to keep the proper amount of acetyl modifications on important stem cell genes. Blood cancers involving MLL1, in contrast, do not have this MOF-Sirtuin balance and place a different chemical modification on genes that result in leukemia.
Blood stem cells also represent an important therapy for patients whose own stem cells are destroyed by chemotherapy. This study also reveals a new way to treat blood stem cells from donors that would expand their numbers.
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Scientists Decode Epigenetic Mechanisms Distinguishing Stem Cell Function and Blood Cancer
The entire heart muscle in young children may hold untapped potential for regeneration, new research suggests.
For decades, scientists believed that after a child's first few days of life, cardiac muscle cells did not divide. Instead, the assumption was that the heart could only grow by having the muscle cells become larger.
Cracks were already appearing in that theory. But new findings in mice, scheduled for publication in Cell, provide a dramatic counterexample -- with implications for the treatment of congenital heart disorders in humans.
Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have discovered that in young mice 15 days old, cardiac muscle cells undergo a precisely timed spurt of cell division lasting around a day. The total number of cardiac muscle cells increases by about 40 percent during this time, when the rest of the body is growing rapidly. [A 15-day-old mouse is roughly comparable to a child in kindergarten; puberty occurs at day 30-35 in mice.]
The burst of cell division is driven by a surge of thyroid hormone, the researchers found. This suggests that thyroid hormone could aid in the treatment of children with congenital heart defects. In fact, doctors have already tested thyroid hormone supplementation in this setting on a small scale.
The findings also have broader hints for researchers developing therapies for the heart. Activating the regenerative potential of the muscle cells themselves is a strategy that is an alternative to focusing on the heart's stem cells, says senior author Ahsan Husain, PhD, professor of medicine (cardiology) at Emory University School of Medicine.
"It's not as dramatic as in fish or amphibians, but we can show that in young mice, the entire heart is capable of regeneration, not just the stem cells," he says.
The Emory researchers collaborated with Robert Graham, MD, executive director of the Victor Change Cardiac Research Institute in Australia. Co-first authors of the paper are Nawazish Naqvi, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory and Ming Li, PhD, at Victor Chang.
The researchers tested how much mice, at the age of day 15, can recover from the blockage of a coronary artery. Consistent with previous research, newborn (day 2) mice showed a high level of repair after such an injury, but at day 21, they did not. The day 15 mice recovered more than the day 21 mice, indicating that some repair is still possible at day 15.
The discovery came unexpectedly during the course of Naqvi and Husain's investigation of the role of the gene c-kit -- an important marker for stem cells -- in cardiac muscle growth. Adult mice with a disabled c-kit gene in the heart have more cardiac muscle cells. The researchers wanted to know: when does this difference appear?
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Spurt of heart muscle cell division seen in mice well after birth: Implications for repair of congenital heart defects
Beware of fake medicines and advertisements touting the purported miracles that stem cell therapy can do. This was the warning aired by former health secretary Esperanza Cabral at the Kapihan sa Manila at the Diamond Hotel last Monday.
Contrary to what the ads claim, she said, stem cell therapy has not been scientifically proven to cure any disease or make anyone young again. It has been successful in a very few experiments, which is the reason quack doctors are taking advantage of it to make exaggerated claims that the therapy can cure the deadliest diseases known to man.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) very recently issued a similar warning against it.
Stem cell therapy is the process of injecting into patients young cells taken from humans or sheep. The theory is that the young cells will rejuvenate the old cells of the patients and make them young again and cure whatever diseases they have. Although experiments are being conducted, no such results have been achieved. But that does not prevent foreign quack doctors from coming here and making all those exaggerated claims. Sadly, they are aided by some Filipino doctors.
The reason is that in countries like the Philippines where the people are suckers for miracle cures, stem cell therapyand other miracle curesis like a gold mine.
Aging millionaires looking for the fountain of youth pay a lot of money to undergo stem cell therapy. Patients with terminal illnesses like cancer, in a desperate search for a cure, also fall victim to the sales talk and word-of-mouth yarns of so-and-so being cured by the therapy.
But they get neither younger nor cured. And the quack doctors run laughing with their patients money all the way to the bank.
A friend told me that he had gone abroad to have stem cell therapy. He said he felt better and stronger after the treatment. Look at me, dont I look younger? he said.
I looked at him. He didnt look a minute younger and in fact looked the same as when I last saw him, maybe even older.
My wife said I look younger, he said. It was his wife who had convinced him to have the stem cell therapy.
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Dont be fooled by quacks and fake meds
In a study published today inF1000Research, Professor Kenneth Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong reveals the full experimental results of an attempt to replicate a controversial study published inNaturerecently that suggested that bathing somatic cells in acid can reprogram them to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). With systematically collected and fully available data, Lee and his colleagues report that carefully replicating the original acid-treatment method does not induce pluripotency in two types of mouse somatic cells, including those used in the original study.
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A subset of immune cells directly target colon cancers, rather than the immune system, giving the cells the aggressive properties of cancer stem cells.
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Adults suffering from diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood-related disorders may benefit from life-saving treatment commonly used in pediatric patients. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a new technique that causes cord blood (CB) stems cells to generate in greater numbers making them more useful in adult transplantation.
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A new study inNaturechallenges research data that form the scientific basis of clinical trials in which heart attack patients are injected with stem cells to try and regenerate damaged heart tissue.
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By carefully controlling the levels of two proteins, researchers at theSalk Institutehave discovered how to keep mammary stem cellsthose that can form breast tissuealive and functioning in the lab. The new ability to propagate mammary stem cells is allowing them to study both breast development and the formation of breast cancers.
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