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Hubby and I actually went to this and it was interesting to say the least and we even had a women there from our area in the actual study. She is doing great and has noticeable as he said(Dr. Freedman tried to get her up but she did not)improvement. Keep in mind there has been the one death to date or as far as I know I think he was the 41 year old. Have the tape here somewhere but I think that's the age of the poor guy. It sounds radical and hubby did not make the criteria as he was offered the retuxin trial but we have chosen Copaxone and Lipitor combo.One neorlogist said we have PPMS and the other said RRMS so we chose RRMS both neurologist are tops in Canada just different Hospitals and one has a boot load of books and a mean disposition. The other the one we picked shows he wants to learn and has not been disillusioned by his ability to have any real impact on the outcome of progression.Hope this helps some but it is radical to say the least.


The Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation Study

with

Dr. Mark Freedman
Lead Investigator – Canadian MS Bone Marrow
Transplant Study Group

Date: Monday, June 13th, 2005
Time: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: Glenway Country Club
470 Crossland Gate, Newmarket

This venue is wheelchair accessible.

Cost: Free Registration required.

To register: call 905–830–4950

Here's a bit of info for anyone researching stem cell procedures. It's recent correspondance from a researcher at the Univ. of Mass - Med.

We have been performing stem cell transplants for MS at my old university for several years, and we will be opening a protocol for MS here in the next month or two. We have generally found that the more prolonged and severe the damage, the worse the outcome and the less reversible the disease. Generally we ask that patients still be ambulatory and have relapsing remitting MS, so that we know that we are not dealing with alot of permanent and irreversible nerve damage at the time they come.. Many insurers try to deny coverage for these transplants, but often they pay most of the bill, but not the stem cell collection or transplant itself. In Chicago, my old partners, Yu Oyama and Richard Burt are performing these transplants at NOrthwestern University and here in MA I will be performing them with the neurologist Dr Michael Glantz.

I've been doing some reading and I'm unclear on the possible advantages of this sort of treatment over, say, Campath. Campath sounds like it does a very similar thing, the "rebooting" of the immune system, with a much lower though nonzero mortality rate.

What are the advantages of something as drastic as this kind of transplant over Campath?