Placenta Implantation Effectiveness?

C

Cburg

New member
Dear Forum,

I am a CKD patient (kidney) looking for my next try at stem cells. I had a six session treatment in Pune India, in Feb 2013 using cord blood and bone marrow, but have seen little improvement.
I have read lately about a treatment using the abdominal fat lobe fused to the kidneys to supply a continuous supply of stem cells, which is successful, but has only been performed on rats:

http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/early/2014/03/11/ASN.2013040387
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140313172933.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24627352

These articles as well as a new one, say that injected stem cells have a very short life of days or hours.

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2014/07/research-team-pursues-techniques-improve-elusive-stem-cell-therapy

Does this apply to only mesenchymal stem cells?
I have been told by a doctor doing placenta implantation, that placenta cells, both injected and implanted placenta tissue, last 325 days.
He proposes a treatment using a total of 10 million cells, both implanted and injected. (http://stemcell-therapy-mexico.com/index.htm Dr. Gonzalez)

Another doctor, also in Mexico, who uses placenta implantation also, uses a "laser activation" of the stem cells (http://www.stemcellmexico.com/Treatment.html). Dr. Gonzalez does not.

A clinic in Malaysia promises "significant (but partial) improvements" using cord blood injections, cultivated to 100million cell count. (http://www.mingmedical.net/about-us.html)

"We in East Asia have been commonly using Stem Cell to treat degenerative conditions, over the last 10 years, and have refined the treatment protocols:

Condition
(patient age 57 yo)
Chronic Kidney Disease
Intravenous
Cord Blood Stem Cell
2 million per kg body weight
3 times, at 3-4 month intervals"

Another Mexican clinic that uses placenta cells: http://stemcell-therapy-mexico.com/index.htm https://sites.google.com/site/stemcellmexteatments/ Dr Rodriguez


I am left wondering a few things:

What is the life span of injected stem cells? Is there a difference between "mesenchymal" and placenta cell life?

Is activation of cells necessary? How is this best accomplished?

Should "blood vessel-forming cells" be used with injections?

Does implantation of placenta tissue have a better chance of working well?

What cell count is necessary for each type of cell?


Any opinions, knowledge, or discussion of the above would be most welcome and appreciated!

Thank you,
Mike
 
B

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Mike - Those are some good questions. I will include them in this month's Ask the Doctor although I'm not sure if there are currently definitive scientific answers for all of them. I am wondering how the doctor you mentioned in Mexico could be so specific as to state they were active for 325 days. Did you ask him if there was a particular study he could provide you with?

Here's a recent article on stem cell treatment using donated placentas.

Stem cells from donated placentas healing stubborn injuries
Posted: Jul 04, 2014 7:00 AM MDT
By Britney Glaser

http://www.kplctv.com/story/25941479/stem-cells-from-donated-placentas-healing-stubborn-injuries

It sounds like something straight out of science fiction: stem cells from donated placentas are being injected into patients with hard-to-heal injuries. The results have been phenomenal, all by taking advantage of something that would be discarded as medical waste.

The stem cells inside a tiny vial will morph into something totally new once injected into the body. Dr. Brett Cascio is the Medical Director of Sports Medicine at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital and he is using this cutting edge technology in some of his toughest cases. “We've know the special nature of stem cells for years, decades,” he said, “but harvesting them and getting them to do what we want them to do is the difficult part.”

Dr. Cascio has treated all sorts of injuries - some that just have a tough time healing. “For some reason along the way, their healing either stopped or went haywire and they didn't heal correctly,” he said, “and they need help on the cellular level to heal their problem.”

That is where stem cells come in: not from a live human being, but from a donated placenta. The cells are tested, prepared and frozen until needed. One placenta can help hundreds of patients. “You don't reject these cells,” said Dr. Cascio, “your body recognizes them as a potential healing factor and helps it to heal itself.”

That healing is something Chad Theriot was desperate to find after rupturing the longest ligament in his foot while playing basketball. “I heard a loud pop,” he said, “and then instant pain. I knew immediately that something was wrong.

Months passed with Theriot on crutches, in a boot, in pain and unable to be the family man he wanted to be. “My wife was having to pick up slack everywhere,” he said, “ at home, at work, with the baby.. I wasn't able to help much.”

A second opinion brought Theriot to Dr. Cascio. The plan was to inject stem cells into the bottom of Theriot's foot , having them grow into good, healthy tissue in the place of what was damaged. “So if you put them in connective tissue or skin, they can grow into skin-type cells or in muscle, they can grow into muscle-type cells,” said Dr. Cascio.

Patients are given twilight anesthesia and the injections are given under X-ray guidance. The actual injection only takes one minute. “Two weeks later I was taking unassisted steps and my pain level on a scale from one to ten went from an eight to a two,” said Theriot.

That was the first time Theriot walked without help in four months. “That was a big day for me,” he said, “that was a big day for us.”

This stem cell technology is still in its early stages, but Dr. Cascio says the future is exciting. “These are not magical cells, it's not like pixie dust, but they help the body heal itself and you can get some really amazing results,” he said.

Data is being collected from sites around the country offering stem cell injections to identify who would benefit the most. Some insurance companies will cover these injections. Prices range from $500-2500.

Copyright KPLC 2014. All rights reserved.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is research that suggests blood vessel-forming cells need to be transplanted along with mesenchymal stem cells in order to improve results.

New Technique to Make Stem Cell Therapy Reality
By IndiaTimes | July 1, 2014

Washington: The mesenchymal stem cells found in the bone marrow can give rise to bone, fat, and muscle tissue, and have been used in hundreds of clinical trials for tissue repair.

Unfortunately, the results of these trials have been underwhelming, the main problem being that these stem cells do not stick around in the body long enough to benefit the patient.

Researchers have now found that transplanting mesenchymal stem cells along with blood vessel-forming cells naturally found in circulation improves results.

This co-transplantation keeps the mesenchymal stem cells alive longer in mice after engraftment, up to a few weeks compared to hours without co-transplantation. This improved survival gives the mesenchymal stem cells sufficient time to display their full regenerative potential, generating new bone or fat tissue in the recipient mouse body.

"We are losing mesenchymal stem cells very rapidly when we transplant them into the body, in part, because we are not giving them what they need," said Juan Melero-Martin, an assistant professor of surgery at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in the US.

"In the body, these cells sit very close to the capillaries, constantly receiving signals from them, and even though this communication is broken when we isolate mesenchymal stem cells in a laboratory dish, they seem to be ok because we have learned how to feed them," he added.

"But when you put the mesenchymal stem cells back into the body, there is a period of time when they will not have this proximity to capillary cells and they start to die; so including these blood vessel-forming cells from the very beginning of a transplantation made a major difference," Melero-Martin explained.

The finding was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
B

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Great finds cburg. With time, these hurdles will be overcome. For lung patients, getting lodged in the lungs is a good thing, but for those who suffer from other diseases, better homing methods are needed. I did find it interesting that they mentioned cytokine pre-treatment. My last treatment included supplements to suppress cytokines. While, I am sure there are other more intense methods to do this, the supplements really did have a positive effect for me. I noticed a difference right away and was able to reduce my medications prior to treatment as advised.



"2.1. Age, Passage Number, and Dosage of MSCs

It has been shown that with higher passage number, the engraftment efficiency of MSCs decreased. Rombouts et al. had performed a time course experiment, where they showed that freshly isolated MSCs had a better efficiency of homing compared to cultured cells [40]. Moreover, they showed that culture of MSCs for 24 hr decreased the homing efficiency to 10% from 55–65% and to near 0% when cultured for 48 hr. It is well documented that with age, the ability of an organism to repair and heal goes down which is in part due to decreased potency of resident stem/progenitor cell. Thus, it is possible that in vitro multiplication also causes “aging” and hence decreases potency. However, another possibility is that for other stem cells like HSCs, culture alters the expression and function of cell surface ligands required for homing;..."

6. Conclusion

"MSC and the likes are already undergoing clinical trials for use in patients especially for their immunomodulatory features. However, their heterogeneity and off-target homing especially lodging in the lungs impede the clinical use of MSC and MSC-like cells. Owing to this, a large number of cells are required to obtain desired effect at the target organ(s). Different methods as discussed above, such as targeted delivery, cytokine pre-treatment, and assisted homing, are being used to circumvent such impedances."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top