This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

It's appears to be looking pretty clear now that ex-vivo colony expansion is required for MSC's as a treatment for MS regardless of the source of the cells that are ultimately used. Adipose tissue will only supply (at most) tens-of-thousands of MSC's per kg of body weight. That is many orders of magnitude fewer cells than thought to be required to have any possible detectable clinical benefit, which is in the range of millions of MSC's per kg of body weight. Re-infusion of unmanipulated stem cells just doesn't even come close to cutting it and simply does not confer any theraputic benefit beyond possible temporary placebo effect. This is why clinics offering such unmanipulated stem cell treatment are just selling an expensive combination of painful adipose tissue liposuction and snake oil. Completely useless.

Here is a human safety study on culture expanded adipose cells

Stem cell treatment for patients with autoimmune disease by systemic infusion of culture-expanded autologous adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells

http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/9/1/181

_________________
RRMS '96 SPMS '02 | Dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) | 10/09 3 stents, 1 angioplasty. Details http://healingpowernow.com

Few weeks ago I contacted Prof. Slavin, he let me know that the CTCI team is now able to (in the laboratory) trans-differentiate bone marrow and adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stromal stem cells (MSC) to neural stem cells, motor neurons, dopaminergic neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes that can produce myelin, and therefore he believes it may be possible to use such methods to induce re-myelination in patients with multiple sclerosis. They need to do animal studies to confirm the efficacy of their new patented procedure before they can get approval to apply that methods clinically. He also stated that adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stromal stem cells seem to develop much faster and much nicer as compared with bone marrow derived stem cells but they do not yet know which source of MSCs is more effective clinically.
The future looks bright!

Awesome news, Packo! Thanks for sharing this. Seems like Prof Slavin is way ahead in this field, both technically and clinically (having offered colony-expanded MSC infusion therapy for some time now). If what you have described works out as hoped, I'm really looking forward to CTCI being able to offer a treatment regimen that takes advantage of this. Slavin is truly a great researcher/doctor and indeed this adds to the hope of future benefificial treatments for the MS (and other) community.

Thanks George and packo.
I think it is really good that there is something to talk about in this forum. It means things are happenning with stem cells. I really learned a lot from you, George and thank you for that and sorry for the too many questions that sometimes may seem silly. I greatly appreciate your comments.


As it seemed to me that most of the clinical trials with MSC have been focusing on bone marrow sources, I was just wondering if the adipose tissues might have provided enough stem cells. I understand that colony-expansion is crucial to reach the neccessary number of cells, but even in this case time of colony expansion can be significantly shortened with ASC. Some sources say that abundant stem cells (millions to billions of cells) can be extracted from adipose tissue.
http://www.hongkongstemcell.com/c/o_information_38b.php

As far as I know 2-4 days are needed to double the number of cells in petri dish. If the adipose tissues provide 500 times more stem cells than bone marrow, then even a month can be gained by using ASC. If I know correctly some scientists think that after a certain amount of time the stem cells start malfunctioning when they are out of the body (after circa 4 months). So, adipose tissues might help.

On the other hand, one of the major disadvantages of adipose derived stem cell is that ASCs are not a completely homogeneous cell population in addition to complicated isolating process.

If my recollection is good, both in Korean RNL and Celltex (also RNL affiliate) are doing MSC injection based on colony expansion. I am not sure if RNL went through the proper clinical tests with ASC? Anyway, I think it is a good thing that both in Texas and Korea treatments are happening with ASC, so we can gain some experience while the lengthy and slow clinical trials start.


It is really a good news, but the patient speaks from me that we are far away from applying his method?? While we are getting there, I would be really happy if the MSC injections would turn out to be safe any efficacious. Do you guys know, what are the experiences of Prof. Slavin with MSC injections? Anyone tried this therapy?

I posted this before, apparently it worked for some people:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... php#page-2

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/200811 ... nt_081116/

However, I also spoke with a person who received MSC infusion few years ago, unfortunately it did not work. I do not know what to say, I guess every case is different. As for me, my neurologist thinks I should wait a while to see how the things will develop in that area. The key element here is patience, something good will emerge from all this. Eppur si muove (and yet it moves), as Galileo Galilei said.

Thanks packo. Was the unsuccessful treatment done with colony expansion? From adipose or bone marrow source? Did he/she receive only one infusion? Where did they do the treatment? Do the clinics have any statsitics on the success of their treatments? ...Of course, even approved drugs can not work for everyone.

As far as I know we have 4 autologous MSC clinical trials going on at the moment and at least three treatment facilities (Korea, Israel and Taxas) where they are using colony expansion based MSC treatment. I hope some info will come out soon from the phase 2 trials. I am just wondering if there is any significant differences among these treatments.

I do not know all the details, except that this person received one infusion in Greece, there is a topic on this forum describing similar experiences:

stem-cells-f25/topic9388.html

Thanks Packo.
It seems to me that the colony expansion applied in Greece was similar in volume (1-2M stem cells per Kg of body weight) to the ones used in the ongoing clinical trials but LESS than in Texas and Korea (RNL) . In Texas they apply circa 600 million per person. I also found an old post here in tims about a pilot study on MSC therapy back in 2007.



stem-cells-f25/topic4259.html#p29010

Hi packo,

Do you have Prof. Slavin's emailaddress? Can you pm it to me? Thx.

Do you know how much this procedure is different from the colony expanded MSC? ---or is it more similar to the Brainstorm treatment they test for ALS at the moment?

Hi there
Maybe this can help :
Prof. Slavin's assistant is called Ruth Grunbaum and here's her email : ruth@CTCIcenter.com
I heard that they are also now proposing Cord Tissue and Placenta derived MSC treatment. if you find out more, please share !
And good luck

Celltex website can now provide details on their lab and banking procedures http://celltexbank.com/
This is good transparency and disclosure about their service. The one benefit of FDA scrutiny is that you know they have double checked all their statements.
Note they do not treat patients, so there is no info on specific conditions. However, they will refer you to physicians participating in IRB monitored trials for different diseases.

Here is a very good criteria list for selecting a stem cell treatment facility
http://stemcellpioneers.com/showthread.php?t=4879

If we ask for these details, the clinics will become more transparent and provide better information.

_________________
RRMS '96 SPMS '02 | Dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) | 10/09 3 stents, 1 angioplasty. Details http://healingpowernow.com

Hi SammyJo,
it's a good list of questions. Did you get anwsers for them from CellTex? It would be very useful.

Thanks, I will try. I also found an email address for prof. Slavin, but it just came to my mind that Friday and Saturday are not workdays in Israel. I would really value his opinion as he has such a tremendous experience in this field and both CTCI and Hadassah have a good reputation not like those scam operations in Panama, etc.

Packo wrote:
Few weeks ago I contacted Prof. Slavin, he let me know that the CTCI team is now able to (in the laboratory) trans-differentiate bone marrow and adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stromal stem cells (MSC) to neural stem cells, motor neurons, dopaminergic neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes that can produce myelin, and therefore he believes it may be possible to use such methods to induce re-myelination in patients with multiple sclerosis. They need to do animal studies to confirm the efficacy of their new patented procedure before they can get approval to apply that methods clinically. He also stated that adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stromal stem cells seem to develop much faster and much nicer as compared with bone marrow derived stem cells but they do not yet know which source of MSCs is more effective clinically.
The future looks bright!

Professor Slavin told me that to do the animal studies, they need funding of approx USD$2-3million. When they have the funding, the studies will be done, and if proven, clinical application will begin immediately.
Anyone got ideas how to raise the funds?