This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

I am considering this treatment and was wondering if anyone here has tried it and what your experience was.

For those of you not familiar with it, fat is extracted from your own body, usually the belly area, then your own stem sells are extracted from the fat and then they are injected back into you body.

Here are a couple of links to some general info:

http://stemcelltherapyinflorida.com/ste ... njections/

https://stemedix.com/multiple-sclerosis/

Hi,

Where do they inject the harvested cells?

Regards

I have called three different clinics and received 3 different answers. One said at the spine (not directly into the spine), the other said at the area of pain or disability (which makes no sense) and the other said they found a way to breach the brain/blood barrier and then inject into the nasal cavity. Needless to say, I am more confused than ever and there does not seem to be substantial information that the treatment helps. I am still researching at this point...

Most stem cell therapies that have been in some way successful, are commonly based around a shot of chemo first to kill the existing immune system. Many believe it is the actual killing of the existing immune system that makes them effective (ie rebooting), not so much the stem cells. In many treatments that I have read about, the stem cells are actually to help the immune system restart after the chemo has wiped it out, not so much to help the CNS repair itself. These treatments you are looking at are very different in that they are all about the benefits of the stem cells themselves. These cells do however have properties of immune control also.

Another thing lacking from these stem cell treatments, is that they only "purify" the extraction (ie pick out the stem cells) from the fat cells, but do NOT perform any expansion on the number of stem cells.

However, I do not know what I am talking about....

The following has some case reports, and details on what was actually used and why
see http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pd ... 6-7-29.pdf
or search in google scholar for more
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?h ... +sclerosis

Hi,

Sounds like a lot researching to do. Not sure what to make of that blood brain barrier suggestion.

Regards

Interesting article on WebMD saying main use is against some cancers, and AFTER chemotherapy which affects immune system. This could be where somebody got the idea of using it as a treatment for MS. I do not think I would take the chance.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/lymphoma/au ... transplant
Geoff

The treatment for MS is that it is totally different than that of Cancer - none of the drugs are used - stem cells are captured from the patient's own fat, extracted, concentrated and then re-introduced into the body.

I have also discovered that blood platelet therapy (or Platelet Rich Plasma ) can also be performed. Blood platelet therapy is typically used for treating joint pain.

For those interested in PRP, you may find this interesting:

https://treatingpain.com/treatment/rege ... plasma-prp


While both of these therapies have been around for a while, they are in their infancy in the scheme of things.

The first web page you linked to does not mention multiple sclerosis or MS. The second one doesn't mention any case studies that I can find. So it sounds like a shot in the dark to me.

The Tisch MS research center of New York uses stem cells from the patients bone marrow. They do discuss the results of their phase 1 study and some specific case studies here:

http://tischms.org/news/june-29-2015-ti ... ts-phase-i

It sounds encouraging but treatments may be a long ways off especially since they are running out of funding.

Here's a report from a few years ago about a trial with mesenchymal stem cells.

http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/inde ... ial_o.html

Had a good discussion with Dr. Nedergaard (discoverer of (g)lymphatic system of brain cleansing)-- about current and future stem cell therapies for MS. Her husband, Steve Goldman, runs the stem cell lab at the University of Rochester, and is working on MS stem cell therapies.
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/labs/goldman-lab/

As Dr. Nedergaard told me, the problem with current therapies (like autologous cells from fat) is the dismal rate of stem cell survival in an inflammatory or hypoperfused situation. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22450704
Until the CNS environment is more hospitible, it's hard for these cells to survive. That's why chemo based therapies were developed. to mute the inflammation--but they come with their own inherent problems, as chemo kills oligodendrocyte proginater cells (OPCs) needed to make myelin, and leads to brain atrophy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17125495

The hope is to understand how the newly discovered CNS immune system, lymphatic vessels and lymphatic system tie in to the inflammatory reaction in the CNS, to address insufficiencies there either mechanically or via pharma, and then add stem and progenitor cells, without chemo.
cheer

I tried SCT last May at Stemgenex in CA...it didn't work for me. It was a waste of money but their site has a good YouTube

Hello

I've talked to the people at stemgenex
They do not use chemotherapy in their treatment.
I feel like it is only a moneymaking venture.
They say The body fat is superior to bone marrow
and that the method of taking cells from bone marrow
is "prehistoric".
That the body fat contains hundreds of times more
stem cells than bone marrow.

I don't know that I will be able to find a place where
chemo therapy drugs are used along with the stem
cell therapy. I think there are a few clinical trials that I
may qualify for... Is this the only way that I may have
chemotherapy along with the cells? Should I stay away
from chemotherapy, anyway? I wonder if my body can handle it.
I have heard of cancer patients saying that the chemo almost killed them.
I have a baclofen pump and am secondary progressive (with an EDSS = 8.
This disqualifies me from most trials.
I believe that it is thought that the disease is no longer inflammatory in the s
econdary progressive phase, does anyone here know it this is correct?

George Bush stood in the way of embryonic stem cell research, so doctors did their own thing trying to use cells that are not pluripotent. I think they lost their way because of a lot of money spent and hype trying to justify it. I think embryonic stem cells have the best chance and they are generally expanded a lot before use. Handling stem cells is its own science. I would not do anything with somebody not well established and affiliated with a large research hospital.

A lot of businesses claiming to do stem cell therapy for money are fly-by-night. Don't trust them.

The medical profession still has no definite proof the immune system is wonky in MS, so killing it off with chemo is risky, painful, and no guarantee of anything.

People who say marrow transplants are prehistoric are just trying to promote themselves. Don't listen. Some people are even doing marrow transplants for MS. My brother had one for leukemia, with ablation, etc., and got some better. Now he's not as worried about the leukemia, but has had host/graft disease and shingles.

In leukemia they don't use your own marrow but get it from a matched donor. When your immune system reconstitutes itself, it is the donor's you are getting. Matching you is tricky, and above a certain age or EDSS, they won't bother. I think here, you have to be under 50.

I'm hoping biotin, fecal transplants etc., will attack the problem in this way: human DNA has been sequenced and is getting better known all the time. But as a species all humans live in symbiosis with thousands of other species, in gut bacteria. We know relatively little about these species and how humans are dependent on them. It is possible that in all the complexity of these thousands of bacteria there are pathways that are broken in MS. If so, by restoring the balance of bacterial life in the gut, we may be able to treat MS.

It may be that there is nothing in particular wrong with us, but the balance of our symbiotic partner species is the real pathology. If this is true, in trying to modify our immunity, we may be trying to shoot mosquitoes with machine guns...

http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-d ... 26916.html