What you need to know about stem cell therapy

i’m a physician

meaning i do practice medicine every

single day

the way we practice medicine

historically and nowadays

is what we call reactive we react

or respond to certain changes our human

bodies go through change is caused by

infections inflammations injuries

or aging related changes as a

cardiologist sometimes i act like an

a plumber dealing with clogged pipes to

try to

reopen them or i feel like an

electrician dealing with arrhythmias

irregularities of the heart using

electric devices

but by doing so we try to prevent

further damage but we really do not

repair any damage which has

occurred already in our bodies on the

other hand stem cells or stem cell

therapy in particular

is a new way of thinking nowadays

to change the paradigm from

reactive medicine to reparative or

regenerative medicine and you all have

heard about stem cell therapy

you heard about some celebrities from

hollywood going to remote islands to

have some

intravenous stem cell injections for

so-called anti-aging purposes

or we have heard about football players

having their knees injected in europe

and all of them show amazing results

if you do an internet search on stem

cell therapy

within 0.54 seconds you get 450 million

hits that’s more hits than the pope gets

and if you look at those hits

on the web the vast majority are

actually from companies

who try to sell you stem cell therapy

advertising

rather than really scientific data

so within the next few minutes i would

like to tell you a little bit about stem

cell therapy what we know

today how it all started and by doing so

i want to guide you first to what we do

in medicine right now

and i will show you some of our own

early experimental studies using stem

cells

followed by a few anecdotal case reports

in human patients

and then at the end i want to give you a

take home message what all of you should

know

about stem cell therapy which is

probably one of the most promising

advantages and advances in modern

medicine today

i’m a soccer player i’m on the outside

on the

left hand this picture was sent to me

just recently

by someone from germany uh dated i think

and in germany playing soccer is like a

religion like many many other countries

as you know and we all

remember the famous quote of the german

soccer coach seb herberger de bal este

haunt

which means the ball is round it sounds

simple but has actually

significant philosophical meanings i

took another picture that’s a year ago

i’m still playing soccer more or less

and

by looking at those pictures side by

side i noticed well

i look a little different right i mean

there’s some change obviously with ages

40 years in between those pictures

almost

and i remember the famous quote of

heraklet of

ephesus saying nothing nothing is

permanent

except change so and medicine nowadays

deals with those changes patients come

to the doctor’s office or the hospitals

because they have symptoms for example

chest pain

or they have injuries as an example a

broken leg

or they have chronic degenerative

changes arthritis in the knees

or an inflammation in the skin or loss

of function or loss of tissue

all these are changes we deal with in

medicine

and traditionally many of our organs

such as the heart and the brain are

considered

differentiated organs that means the

cells we have in our heart today

are the same cells we were born with so

once there is some damage

we can’t repair them even though we do

have some stem cell potential in our

bodies

we lost the power to repair

a large amount of damage so as a

cardiologist we put

plasters and bandages on damage rather

than

repairing it i just wanted to show you

briefly a case of a young man i saw a

few days ago now a 49 year old man

he came with new onset of chest pain and

was diagnosed with a heart attack

so we took him to the cardiac

catheterization laboratory where we take

a catheter from the groin or from the

arm into the heart inject contrast

die into the arteries which is shown

here

and in that particular case the right

coronarity was completely blocked

meaning there’s lack of oxygen in large

portions of the heart which can lead to

death

so as i mentioned like a plumber we go

ahead

with drills and wires and balloons and

metal rings which we call stents

open up that tube and the blood flow is

established

and heart attack is treated there’s

other ways of course

to treat heart damage if it’s more

severe we might have to do

open heart surgery as shown here

sometimes even

on the beating heart where we use what

we call bypass grafts to overcome

blocked arteries we use those grafts

from the legs or from the chest of the

same patient

and basically bypass the blockages in

order to treat

the coronary artery disease or in more

extreme cases

we take the whole organ out we do what

we call a cardiac transplantation

but this is a major surgery of course

and this is more regeneration than

repair

but there’s only 2 200 heart transplants

done per year in the united states but

there’s

more than 6 million patients suffering

from

heart failure so what leads to those

damages and diseases in a large part

it’s aging

and we all age differently as you know

and of

interest there are certain species who

don’t age or

were even immortal some fungi for

example

are immortal and this picture shows a

shark a greenland shark who is supposed

to be

512 years old

so how come that a shark can live

hundreds of years while our life span as

humans is usually less than 80 years of

age

so obviously he eats a lot of fish and

swims a lot that might help

but of interest sharks have an unlimited

regeneration of their teeth because of

an

abundance of stem cells in their body so

if they lose

teeth they can replace them and that

might play a role

in the long age so what are stem cells

stem cells are unique

cells which have the ability to develop

into any cell in our body whether it’s a

brain cell a fat cell

a skin cell a bone cell a heart cell

whatsoever

and in the embryonic stage in in utero

stem cells are responsible for the

development

of our organs

we have to learn from nature if you cut

off

the limp of a reptile of a salamander

for example

due to an abundance of stem cells in

their system

this reptile is able to to completely

regrow

that limb so they don’t lose it and we

as humans by the way have the same

ability but only

during the first four months in utero

after that

the lymph is cut off we lose it

so let me tell you briefly how we

started stem cell therapy and we were

among the first in the world using

embryonic cells in experimental animals

where we took the hearts of pregnant

animals

out took the stem cells from the heart

and injected

those in recipient animals in which we

created

heart attacks before into the border

zone as shown here

of scar tissue damaged tissue and by use

of staining techniques and fluorescence

microscopy

we could demonstrate for the first time

that those cells

from other animals basically could

survive within the recipient

for up to six months and moreover

that led to an improvement of the

contractile function

meaning the strength of the heart in

those

animals from the experimental

view let me just tell you a few case

reports this lady

on the right is an 87 year old lady

a patient of mine who came to us a

couple of years ago

with severe what we call coronary artery

disease blockages in the arteries not

amenable

for any interventional or surgical

therapy in fact

this lady was so symptomatic that she

could not even leave her house to go to

the mailbox

to get her mail because she a chest pain

and was short of breath

so the only option was an experimental

approach

intravenous stem cell injection so after

three months

she was basically completely

asymptomatic

after six months she traveled the world

on her own flew back to japan

was walking through the mall no symptoms

whatsoever

that six years ago still doing extremely

well that’s a

single case but let me tell you about

another case

this is a young man 32 years of age who

was admitted to a large academic

hospital in los

angeles with a very rare condition which

we call

calcify lexus which means that he

hardened all his arteries with the

entire body the kidneys failed was in

dialysis he had several heart attacks

his colon

ruptured three times and the entire

integument meaning the skin

of the body fall off in fact this

condition has a mortality

of more than 90 percent meaning 90 or

more

percent of people have it they die

within a month

so i was asked to put this patient on

hospice but we

refused to do so he’s 32 years old

so we treated him several times with

stem cells and of interest

after 14 months being in the hospital he

left

he did lose both of his legs he still

was on dialysis but he is alive

way too surprised to all the doctors

involved in this case nobody had

expected that

because the stem cells helped basically

to rebuild

and repair some of the damage in his

organs

so how do stem cells work now so there’s

different hypothesis but let me just

show you the the main modes of action if

you wish

the first mode of action is

anti-inflammatory they fight

inflammation

so if you have a heart attack for

example this is always affiliated with

the local inflammation in the organ and

this slide on the lower

portion shows you injections three times

of stem cells

and then we measured the tissue content

in the heart muscle of inflammatory

parameters

which showed a significant reaction uh

with regard to reduction of the

inflammation

after every single injection in addition

on the upper portion of this graft

it shows the left ventricular function

the strength of the heart

compared to in red placebo treated group

and which showed the same thing that the

injection of stem cell

improved the strength of the heart

versus placebo or standard therapy did

not

in addition there’s what we call

angiogenesis

the build up of new blood vessels

this is a picture of an experimental

animal where the femoral artery

is completely occluded and we injected

stem cells

into the tissue and here you can see

hundreds of

new blood vessels capillaries and

arterioles

which try to save the limb by providing

oxygen to the extremity this is what we

call angiogenesis

or arteriogenesis induced by stem cell

therapy

and it works thirdly there’s

regeneration

or paracrine effects and in particular

in the heart

several studies have shown that there is

some degree of regeneration if we inject

stem cells directly in the heart the

stem cells are able

to conform and to develop into

contracting heart muscle cells who are

then able to contract in synchrony

with the recipient cells other people

don’t believe that there’s a complete

regeneration only a partial but there

might be pyroclean effect

meaning the stem cells might be able to

strengthen the surrounding

healthy tissue which also in turn then

leads to an improvement of the function

but there’s always bad news about

everything

and if you look in the news there’s a

lot of

announcement for example from the fda

the federal drug administration

stating that stem cell therapy is not

fda

approved we do it in the frame of

clinical studies but it’s not an

approved treatment

and the fda wants against

undifferentiated use

of stem cells on the other hand two

years ago

where several news reports about 18

patients

all over the country in the u.s were

ended up in emergency rooms with blood

infection sepsis

as a result of one single intravenous

stem cell injection from one particular

lab and as a consequence of that the fda

shut down that lab and shut down several

providers offices

who obviously did not conform to fda and

other industry regulations

and didn’t use cleanliness to ensure

non-contamination of their products so

be cautious about that

on a positive side we see positive

reports in the news this is a young man

at the university of southern california

was completely paralyzed after an

accident

and after stem cell injections into the

spine connected to the brain

those cells were able to regenerate in

part neurons

nerve cells and now we can move his arms

which couldn’t be found even can lift

some weights

as you can see here so let me just

summarize about the myth the missus is

stem cell therapy fda approved no

it’s not at this point do stem cells

cure certain diseases

no don’t believe it some people make

false claims about that

with the exception of stem cell

transplantation in certain forms of

cancer

but this is a different story some

people might tell you stem cells have no

side effects no

that’s not true either we not even know

the long-term effects

there’s some data that cancer cells

might be

promoted even with stem cell injection

there might be some immune responses

so there’s a lot of unknowns at this

point

stem cell injections can be performed by

anyone definitely

not i recently had actually actually a

technician coming to my

office trying to sell me stem cells from

his company

the same time i had a patient in the

next room behind my back the technician

went to the patient went to his house

and actually injected him

in the knee with his product unethical

and professional and lawful

not everybody should do that all labs

provide high quality products

no this is wishful thinking but we in

our experience

we have seen a lot of non-conformity

to regulations facts are that stem cell

therapy nowadays is the most promising

advance in modern medicine stem cells

have a responsibility to repair damage

and heal they decline in quality

and quantity in our body the older we

get the less potent stem cells we have

they do induce a natural healing but

sometimes need to be

mediated from the outside but again

nothing is permanent

except change so at the end let me just

briefly mention covert since we

underground

pandemic this is a chinese doctor who

injected nine patients with severe covet

infections in china wuhan

with one single intravenous injection of

stem cells they all recover

this is non-randomized control but i can

tell you we did our own study randomized

placebo control double blind

with amazing results soon to be

published

so if you consider as a potential

consumer in patient stem cell therapy

ask questions

ask the provider about their own

experience their publications

where do they get the sales from which

labs

what is their reputation but keep in

mind

we are in the process of changing from

reactive

to regenerative medicine for acute

injuries but also for chronic

degenerative diseases

and this is the future of medicine

thank you

you