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Liberation wrote:I am just wondering if the fact that adipose fat tissue has 300-500 fold number of healing mesenchymal stem cells compared to bone marrow would obviate the need for cell expansion?

I read in one of the articles that George posted that in case of BMMSCs, long-term culture alters the quality of MSCs, including morphological changes, attenuated expression of specific surface markers, reduced proliferative capacity, differentiation potential, and trophic activity.

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

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!

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!

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.

...

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.

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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:

http://www.thisisms.com/forum/stem-cell ... c9388.html

T...

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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.

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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?