The folks at CBS’s 60 Minutes have been up in arms the last couple of years about fraud being perpetrated in the name of stem cells. They are right to do so, of course, but their stridency and their unwillingness to report the many successes of these evolving techniques do a great disservice to the millions of people who can be benefitted by effectively applied stem cell therapies.
A forty-four-year-old man came to us with scleroderma in 2008. His disease had already progressed several years by then and his skin had become hardened almost like cardboard. He was unable to turn his head because of the tightness of his neck and speech was difficult because of tightness of his lips. He had only limited movement in his hands and fingers and complained of pain in his joints and back as well as depression.
Ever since the United States began tightening up travel for its citizens, patients from the U.S. have worried about getting treated because of the delays involved in getting a passport to leave the country. Some of that worry is misplaced. You don’t really need a passport to leave your own country and you don’t need a passport to visit Tijuana.
In the past, people with arthritis have had to resign themselves to it as being just another part of growing old. Traditional treatment emphasizes medications – anti-inflammatories and analgesics – to mask the symptoms. This lessens the amount of pain a patient experiences but it does not help the patient get better.
Medical science still doesn’t know what causes autism, which is a spectrum disorder of the brain that appears with varying severity in as much as one percent of the population, but we do know that the spectrum is associated with restricted flow of blood to the brain and with immune dysregulation.
The connection between autism and the immunological system has created a lot of interest within the regenerative medicine community.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (also called “SLE” and “lupus”) is a chronic autoimmune disease of connective tissues that can affect any part of the body. The immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own cells and tissue and causes inflammation and tissue damage and, with lupus, this damage occurs most commonly to the heart, joints, skin, lungs,
Philosophers and scientists throughout the ages have emphasized the importance of working in concert with others. Bernard of Chartres and Sir Isaac Newton described what we do as “standing on the shoulders of giants”. We at ProgenCell belong to many professional associations for this very reason. By working with others in our field, we learn about the discoveries of others and we are continually challenged to improve our own work.
Stem cells are found in many parts of the body. Your doctor exercises professional judgment in deciding which ones are to be used and how they are to be applied. We at ProgenCell have found that the stem cells in a patient’s own (“autologous”) bone marrow are generally the best choice, although in rare cases we also make use of stem cells in adipose tissue or cord blood derived from the same patient.
