that injected stem cells exert a healing effect,

1. The best current thinking is that injected stem cells exert a healing effect, But what happens if you extract those mesenchymal cells from bone or fat and put them back in the body? We’re not really sure. The best current thinking is that injected stem cells exert a healing effect, secreting proteins that improve, tamp inflammation, and aid in recovery, says Stanford neurosurgeon and stem cell researcher Gary Steinberg. That’s whether you inject them straight into an arthritic knee to help generate new cartilage, or into the bloodstream to possibly restore Parkinson’s-damaged nerves. How do the stem cells know exactly where to go and what to do? co-founder and Palm Springs urologist Elliot Lander likens the process to a beacon. Injured and inflamed cells send out an signal; new stem cells pick it up. “The stem cells are so smart, all you have to do is turn them loose,” he offers. They float around to different areas promise of stem cells is nothing new — academics have been studying them in animal models and human trials for more than But starting in the last decade, clinical stem cell pioneers like Christopher Centeno, the founder of the Colorado- headquartered (working with bone marrow) and Lander (working with fat) began taking the cells out of the lab and putting them into patients for money — anywhere from per for investigational therapies that insurance wouldn’t cover. The early adopters have streamlined the extracting and delivery technology and license stem cell review to doctors to expand the field. And to almost everyone’s surprise, the has stayed on the sidelines, allowing stem cell clinics to grow into a kind of parallel universe operating outside the traditional institutions that have

2. controlled biomedical progress the National Institutes of Health, major research universities, Big Pharma. This policy applies to the conduct of human embryonic stem cell research and to all persons who conduct as Yale students, faculty or staff, using Yale facilities, or paid for with Yale funds Human entities that arise from mechanisms other than the joining of a human egg and sperm and which have the potential to yield Examples include entities produced using nuclear transfer, called nuclear transfer embryos, and entities produced by activation of an unfertilized ovum, called parthenogenetic embryosWhether this is a good thing depends on where you sit. Academics are mostly aghast. To their minds, research hasn’t adequately established safety or efficacy. “There’s a long history of individuals entering the [medical] marketplace and offering some cure-all panacea,” says University of Minnesota bioethicist Leigh Turner, who co-authored the new report criticizing the proliferation of stem cell clinics. The problem is, those claims typically. cartilage and, before that, laetrile as can’t-miss cancer cures.) For his part Lander says he and his co-founding partner, cosmetic surgeon Mark Berman, are doing what’s necessary to advance this new therapy. “We take things and try them, and if they work, we do it again. If they don’t, we don’t do it anymore — true trial and error.” That may not sound reassuring, but it’s how the field of surgery continues to advance and Lander considers stem cell therapy just another form of clinicians will admit they don’t have the broad, controlled studies to prove injected stem cells are safe and effective. That’s a tall order without government or Big Pharma funding. “I will gladly do the largest double-blind, placebo-controlled study of all time if you give me the money,” says Kristin chief science officer of a Florida-based company that has given some doctors stem cell training. What clinicians do have is what they’ve seen with their own eyes. “We literally have patients who have come out of wheelchairs and are walking again,” Comella says.