“Latest Stem Cells News”

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi (image by Getty Images via @daylife)

An international conference entitled: ‘Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture‘ is due to begin today in the Vatican, lasting until 11 November. The event, which has been organised by the US Stem for Life Foundation and by the Pontifical Council for Culture, has the aim of supporting research and increasing public awareness of treatment using adult stem cells.

The conference will be attended by 350 scientists, religious figures, politicians, educators and industry representatives.
Primary stem cells are of two kinds: embryonic and adult. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or to become another type of cell with a more specialised function, such as a muscle cell or brain cell.

Sources of adult stem cells have been found in the bone marrow, the blood and the liver. This offers the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat many diseases.

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If you have done any research on stem cell treatments abroad, you will undoubtedly read negative articles like this one on CNN from the mainstream media saying these companies are promising cures and are preying on the desperate, that these companies are selling “snake oil”   Nothing could be further from the truth.

The stem cell companies and stem cell doctors that are part of the Repair Stem Cell Institute offer patients a good chance at an improvement in the patient’s quality of life- they don’t offer nor promise cures.  Patients going to these stem cell therapy treatment centers abroad know this.

Unfortunately, the United States and their FDA don’t give these patients any other options.  Are they able to use their own stem cells to help their multiple sclerosis or heart disease-  Stem Cells that have been proven safe in thousands of studies? No.  What is one to do then?  These patients must go abroad for the only treatment that can help their disease or condition.

Here is a sampling of what some of these companies  affiliated with the Repair Stem Cell Institute tell their patients:

From Stem Cells China:

It’s not a cure. It’s about quality of life. Every day I see inquiries begin like this: “Can stem cells cure…?” Everyone should know the answer to that one right away. No. No known therapy utilizing stem cells can cure any medical condition. Not one.

A cure would rewrite the broken code of your genome. A cure would rewind the debilitating progression of a neuro-degenerative disease to the moment before onset. A cure would fix all the wrongs of a baby’s challenged birth. We eagerly await the development of cures and their accessibility to patients in need.

So why are people receiving stem cell therapy today? Therapies involving adult stem cells today are providing quality of life improvements for many patients. It’s no cure. Just as painkillers are not a cure for pain. They improve our quality of life if we feel pain.

But who would deny that painkillers are still worthwhile for extreme pain? Many doctors in the West are saying that they don’t have enough proof that stem cells are improving quality of life for patients. In the meantime, patients are busy coming to China and China’s stem cell clinics are busy offering the chance for quality of life improvements where none else would exist. We encourage you to explore the therapies being offered today.

From Dr. Shimon Slavin, Israel, helping people like Louis Zylstra and Arndt Roehlig

However, we have some positive and most encouraging evidence that the cells we inject may be of benefit, especially as evidenced in some patients with multiple sclerosis as well as based on the first patient we treated with spinal injury that seemed to have somewhat improved. The good news is that there are no side effects at all so there is no risk and nothing to lose (except money…). I would like to stress that since we are in very early stages of our research, nothing can be said about the clinical efficacy of our approach.  However, on the other hand, I do understand that patients in need cannot wait for all the answers to be solved and this is why we agree to offer experimental procedures for patients that understand the experimental nature of our program and consent to try and explore new treatment options.

From Dr. Roberto Fernandez Vina– For doctors who say that current stem cell therapies are “unproven,” Dr. Fernandez Viña has the following response:

“How many patients must to be treated to say this is a cure? How many patients must die waiting for the word “cure?”

A lot of diseases are not totally cured with drugs but the laboratories talk about curing (HIV, Tuberculosis and a lot of malignant deseases). They say that the drugs “cure” but in reality the drugs improve the quality of life. Stem cells “cure” in the same sense. If a person is dying of diabetes and we improve the prognosis and he no longer needs insulin injections, we increase the C peptide, decrease the HbA1c, decrease protein in the urine, decrease the risk of amputation or kidney failure, in my book that is a “cure.”

From Richard Humphries, with multiple sclerosis and a stem cell recipient from Cell Medicine in Costa Rica:

I’m case study #1 in the paper (Multiple Sclerosis Study) just released and have had two stem cell treatments in Costa Rica where they promise nothing but deliver wonderful results. Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis patients can’t wait on historical data. Time is not on our side but stem cells improved my quality of life and the follow up MRI looks excellent.

From the X cell Center in Germany:

Even if not all of the interactions have been conclusively researched to date, the status of the current medical insights has indeed reached a level that allows the non- hazardous treatment with adult stem cells and puts medical professionals in a position to assume responsibility for its use.

Given the proven treatment success of regenerative medicine, the question of whether more research is needed prior to therapeutic use has already been answered.

Those who nevertheless demand stem cell therapy be postponed until we know more about it are taking away patients’ rights to make their own decisions as they search for medical solutions – for the kind of help stem cell therapy does offer.

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A 300-euro bill has arrived for some couples that had stem cells taken from their child at birth three years ago. Sant’Anna has sent a bill to parents who decided to transport umbilical cord blood to Switzerland, which in Italy cannot be stored for personal use.

For the past year, the procedure is no longer free at Sant’Anna, but now the hospital is sending bills out to couples who had the procedure done in 2008 when the hospital was not yet making people pay and the operation was entirely free. Numerous couples in the past weeks have surprisingly received a bill from Sant’Anna and the complaints are rolling in, along with phone calls and e-mails, opinion columns in the newspapers and interviews on TV.

“Our first son was born in 2006,” said a couple of young parents who asked to remain anonymous. “We asked the hospital to keep the umbilical cord stem cells and send them to Switzerland where it is possible to pay for them to be stored for personal, future use. No one at Sant’Anna hospital told us that we would have had to pay for this service.”

A few weeks ago due to the upcoming birth of their second son, the couple returned to the hospital.

“We asked for the same service,” they explained, “and this time they asked us for a 300 euro payment in order to obtain the necessary certification to transport the blood to Switzerland. We accepted, despite the fact that 300 euros seemed excessive, because they only need a simple health document. We paid the bill, but recently we also received a second bill for the same amount and we discovered that the bill was for the birth of our first child 3 years ago.”

The same thing happened to about ten couples, which three years after receiving the same services from the hospital, were sent a bill by Sant’Anna Hospital. A 300-euro bill that was completely unexpected, since until the end of March 2008 the hospital had not set any price for the service.

Current laws in Italy do not allow people to store stem cells for personal use. Only free, voluntary, and anonymous donations of umbilical cord blood can be made, which are then made available to anyone who needs them, just like blood or organ donations.

“Voluntary donation is covered by the national health system,” said executives at the hospital through their press office. Donation for personal use is not covered because it is not part of the program. Orders from the healthcare ministry specify that public hospitals do not have to guarantee this service. The hospitals, like Sant’Anna, which make this service available, naturally have the right to charge patients for this service, since it is not covered by the national health system.”

At least until March 2008 there were no precise regulations on the matter.

“Regulations were set one year ago,” said heath-care officials, “and since then all of the couples are being informed that the cost of the service is 300 euros. This sum is needed in order to perform a detailed certification of the blood. This document is necessary to transport the stem cells across the border. The hospital must guarantee that the withdrawal was done in compliance with all of the regulations and that the sample is healthy, and that it has been collected and stored according to all regulations.”

However, Sant’Anna is sending out bills for children that were born before March 2008. “The couples knew that sooner or later they would receive a bill,” said hospital officials. “The sum was not established, but they were informed that this was not a free service.”

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A blood sample databank under the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP), was officially established Monday at Zhongguancun of Beijing.
The new databank is now the largest for Chinese people in the world, according to Hong Junling, deputy head of CMDP management center.

The databank includes information such as the names and gender of nearly one million donors and information about to which ethnic groups the donors come from, Hong said.
It also covers such medical information as blood types, gene types and health status of the donors.

The CMDP, launched in 2001 by the Red Cross Society of China, aims to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.
But Hong said the blood sample databank could help genetic analysis for major diseases other than blood diseases.

The blood sample databank has collected 970,000 samples and provided more than 1,200 patients with haematogenous stem cells, including 50-odd cases from abroad, according to Hong.
The number of samples is expected to reach one million by 2010.

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Stem cells found in the amniotic liquid represent new hopes to treat diseases. For the 13th World Congress on Human Reproduction, which is taking place in Venice, Biocell and Toma, two companies based in the Lombardy region active in the field of prenatal diagnosis and biotechnology, today are presenting the results of research conducted by their scientific staff entitled “Characterization and cryoconservation of mesenchymal stem cells from the amniotic liquid”.

“Every day the amniotic liquid reveals its potential as a source of mesenchymal stem cells, creating increasing interest in the field of regenerative medicine,” said Professor Simoni, the Scientific Director of Biocell Center. “Stem cells in the amniotic liquid are multipotent, very young, and able to differentiate into various tissues.

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Former Vice President Al Gore Endorses Trans-Pacific Collaboration to Promote Use of Patient Cells for Drug Discovery and Development and Cell-Based Therapies iZumi Bio, Inc., and Kyoto University‘s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), today announced a collaboration to promote the basic research, development and application of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology – a form of cellular reprogramming which originated in Japan – with the goal of advancing drug discovery and enabling cell-based therapies.

“Stem cell research holds great promise for the creation of new therapies that could revolutionize the treatment of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and muscular dystrophy. The discovery that iPScell technology brings, that “stem cell-like” cells can be generated from a small amount of human skin rather than from embryos, opens a new door for stem cell research and its application to therapeutic discovery,” said Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Noting that Science Magazine named cellular reprogramming the “breakthrough of the year” in 2008, Gore concluded, “The partnership between these two leading organizations is a critical step in furthering this research and turning stem cell research into therapeutic realities sooner.”

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