When Pearland residents Todd and Linsey Hyatts son, Tucker Beau, received a diagnosis of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis when he was just two years old, the future looked agonizing for the previously precocious little boy. His parents refused to lose hope, however, and took a chance on stem cell therapy to improve Tuckers quality of life.

Now at age six, Tucker Beau looks and acts like any other normal boy his age, save for taking rests more often. He has had two separate stem cell infusions in August and November that have turned his slow, painful decline into a fading memory.

Celltex Therapeutics Corp., a Houston-based biotechnology company located in the Galleria area, uses proprietary technology to isolate, multiply and store their clients own stem cells to be used for regenerative therapy. This therapy has been proven effective with many conditions, including vascular (e.g. Raynauds Disease, kidney artery disease), autoimmune (e.g. arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus) and degenerative (e.g. Parkinsons, Alzheimers) diseases.

To get stem cells for a client, fat is extracted from the abdomen in a minimally invasive process that takes 15 30 minutes with no recovery time. This fat is then taken to Celltex, where the components of the fat are separated.

Celltex isolates the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and places them in a nutrient-rich environment to grow. The initial extraction contains about 250,000 stem cells. Celltexs methods can produce one billion cells from that original extraction in as little as 5 weeks, making it unnecessary for clients to have a second extraction in most cases. The cells are frozen and banked at Celltexs lab, ready if and when the client needs another infusion, whether that is in three months or 30 years.

Adult [as opposed to embryonic] MSCs have the remarkable potential of migrating to different parts of the body, recognizing sites of injury and inflammation, and are then able to transform into many different types of cells, says Celltex Chairman and CEO David Eller.

Celltex takes great care in providing safe, pure cells to their clients. The Quality Control Dept,, headed up by QC Manager Kathy Gohlke, tests the cells at different stages throughout the process to ensure that no contaminants are present and that the cells are healthy and viable. Should contaminants be found at some point, which has only happened once out of about 500 clients served since 2011, a second fat extraction may be required.

Erik Eller, Head of Operations, explained that Celltex is also prepared for all kinds of negative scenarios so that the banked cells will stay safe. In the event of a long-term power failure, large generators located on site automatically provide electricity for up to two weeks. An even longer-term solution is in the works. The actual vats that the cells are stored in do not require electricity at all.

The labs at Celltex contain two clean rooms; one for manufacturing and another for Quality Control. These rooms are kept at a constant and optimal temperature, are pressure controlled and the air is continuously filtered through hospital-grade HEPA filters to reduce the chances of contamination. Employees who work in the clean rooms must be covered from head to toe in protective gear to keep the stem cells as healthy as possible.

When a client is ready for treatment, Celltex ships that persons harvested stem cells to either Guadalajara or Cancun Mexico, where the client will receive the infusion in a top-of-the-line hospital by a licensed physician.

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