The Stem Cell Revolution

PROLOGUE We have entered the rapidly evolving stem cell age. The media saturates us with stories, hype and promises about stem cell wonders and cures. As clinicians, we witnessed the initial achievements in cell therapy unlocking the potential for actual organ repair and replacement. While academia and industry may eventually provide pharmaceutical “stem cells in a bottle,” there already exists an alternative clinical industry of stem cell treatment clinics offering cell therapies derived from adult tissues – particularly adipose tissue. These centers offer patients treatment options that they cannot obtain in many traditional doctors’ offices or large trials. In the US, same day surgical procedures permit physicians to transfer tissues rich in stem cells to damaged areas of the body providing patients access to regenerative therapies now. Same day surgical procedures that maintain sterility without risk of disease transmission support the very mission of the current FDA tissue handling rules. Thus, stem cells found in autologous fat, extracted through a safe and near painless procedure afford such clinics the opportunity to help countless patients now. In 2008, colleagues in Asia provided Dr. Mark Berman, an internationally recognized expert on fat grafting procedures, an improved way to harvest and process fat for grafting. Further, they had developed a method to procure stromal vascular fraction (SVF – rich in mesenchymal stem cells) from fat. Once safe enzyme materials were available, we modified the technique to produce a closed sterile surgical method for producing SVF. We quickly realized that we had valuable technology at our disposal but that we would have to use it judiciously. From the start, we created the California Stem Cell Treatment Center®, a multispecialty team necessary for treating conditions beyond our scope of practice such orthopedic, cardio/pulmonary, urologic and other diseases. We set up safety studies for the investigational use of SVF and obtained Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for them. We built an educational website www.stemcellrevolution.com that explains the nature of this patient funded research. We coined the term “cell surgery” since our surgical procedure has no laboratory component thus distinguishing ourselves from the pharmaceutical model. We have now performed over 2000 cases demonstrating extraordinary safety and no serious adverse effects related to SVF deployment. We have seen astonishing results in tissue healing, autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease mitigation, arthritis mitigation and treatment of crippling back pain. The uses and various methods of deploying SVF are continually growing. Understanding the importance and necessity of teaching our technology to other interested physicians, we formed the Cell Surgical Network®(CSN) in 2012 and started training select physicians in our regenerative medicine techniques. CSN® now includes 79 centers around the world. All Network physicians are performing cell surgery using identical methods and protocols and all are collecting safety and outcomes data in our online database. Our safety study for the first 1000 patients is in manuscript form. Considered a disruptive technology, point of care production and deployment of SVF allows surgeons to tap the human storehouse of healing cells, making them “bio-available” for disease mitigation. The Cell Surgical Network® mission is to accelerate the quality of regenerative medicine and have safe and cost effective cell based therapies available soon to everyone in the world. A vision we get closer to achieving every day. Elliot Lander MD and Mark Berman MD