I’d like to tell you a story today the
story of what I believe is and a story
of what could be and I’m gonna start
this story with the image of this
beautiful young woman that I’ll call
Dania who is 28 years old in this
photograph Dania was brought to me at 14
years of age by her mother from Jamaica
with a rare progressive neuromuscular
degenerative disorder called spinal
muscular atrophy spinal muscular atrophy
is a genetic disorder whose hallmarks
are autoimmune disease and inflammatory
types of reactions it leads to
progressive weakness in muscles and
ultimately a decline or a collapse in
the spine that collapse crushes the
heart and lungs and would have killed
her very shortly I found a very
courageous spine surgeon in New York who
was willing to try to reverse some of
that curve and prolong her life in doing
so and to give her more time essentially
to spend with this miracle of hers her
daughter who is now 11 years old
Dainius 37 but she is declining from
this disease she has never walked by
herself she has never rolled over in a
bed by herself she has never bathed
herself she has never fed herself she
has been one of the most extraordinary
and important influences in my career
and for the last 23 years I can honestly
say there hasn’t been a day that’s gone
by that I don’t think about ways to try
to slow down progression of diseases
like this and I also know that if I knew
20 years ago what I know now I could
have done that for her so this is
obviously a very extreme case but I
challenge you and say that we are all
faced with autoimmune and inflammatory
types of diseases in our lives every day
aging is hallmarked by a process of
inflammatory reactions altered blood
flow to organs tissues and structures
that lead to degeneration so in fact we
could actually call aging a disease if
we wanted to we’re faced with it in the
form of thyroid diseases cardiac disease
diabetes lung diseases
dermatologic of diseases and arthritis
the most common of which is
osteoarthritis the prevalence of
osteoarthritis is actually staggering
somewhere in the neighborhood of about
50 million people suffer in the US alone
and about 1.5 billion in the world we
have a responsibility to try to slow
down the progression and the suffering
from diseases like this we also have
innate structures that are built-in that
help do this in the form of stem cells
now stem cells have a myriad of
functions but two of the functions that
I am particularly interested in are
inflammatory and something called
angiogenic angiogenesis is just a fancy
word that means to regrow blood vessels
and I just told you the two of the
hallmarks of the diseases associated
with aging are inflammatory and altered
blood flow this would be an amazing
mixture if we could just fit stem cells
into the treatment of these types of
entities that we all deal with now what
are stem cells what do they look like
this is an a solitary isolated stem cell
this isn’t a stem cell going through
cell division or mitosis these are stem
cells attached to blood vessels they
flatten out and they encircle the blood
vessels that’s where they live stem
cells also produce over 3,000 different
growth factors or what we call trophic
factors which are proteins and it’s
these little bundles or micro vesicles
that are really the sort of worker bees
these are the things that we’re looking
for but where do we isolate stem cells
and these growth factors from in fact we
can get these stem cells from almost any
tissue in the body but some of the most
plentiful and potent sources are
actually from post natal II derived
tissue umbilical cord amniotic fluid
placental tissue one single umbilical
cord can treat hundreds of patients this
is staggering to me there are a growing
number of countries around the world
that allow the processing of these forms
of stem cells from post natal tissue
some of them are listed here include
South Korea Japan Israel India Panama
the list goes on not yet in the United
States and I hope that’s coming very
soon I can imagine
therefore a world where we can harness
the power of these structures that we
have
about available to us one of the
challenges that we face is that there’s
an inverse relationship between our age
and the number and potency of stem cells
that we have so when we’re born you see
we have about one stem cell for every
10,000 or so bone marrow cells but by
the time were 80
we have only one stem cell for
approximately every two million this is
exponential attrition rate and it really
plays a big role when we’re trying to
decide where we’re gonna get the source
of cells or tissue to treat different
clinical conditions obviously as is the
case most of the time younger is better
so we are inundated in our lives through
the internet and social media with what
I call information overload how do we
sift through all this how do we know
what’s true how do we know it’s safe I
get articles almost every day from my
patients talking about cell types cell
safety cell harvesting cell culture cell
applications cell delivery cell
expansion to sell her not to self I
don’t know anymore it’s very confusing
now in the course of all this in my
career about 10 years ago I got very
sick I was infected with Lyme disease
which invaded my central nervous system
I had severe cognitive changes with
short-term memory loss word finding
difficulties which I’m experiencing
right now I had severe burning muscle
pain I had joint pain I had balance and
coordination problems I had low-grade
fevers I had fatigue I was really really
sick I had developed an autoimmune form
of a thyroid condition that I was told
was triggered by the Lyme disease
so I underwent almost a year of very
conservative management with both
intravenous and oral antibiotics and a
slew of other drugs to treat my symptoms
my side effects at the end of that year
I was definitely improved but I had
residual symptoms that I knew were
inflammatory in origin I had persistent
muscle pain joint pain the things I hear
from my patients every day I still had
my thyroid condition which was
autoimmune and they knew from all my
years of research that the answer for
these types of inflammatory conditions
was in the world of stem cells so I
decided finally to put my body where my
mouth was and I went off and received
intravenous infusions of stem cells
my recovery over the next weeks two
months was nothing short of remarkable
almost all of my symptoms that have been
had abated and Wow
look at that I returned to a normal
function of life but my bigger challenge
following this was how do I apply this
then to my patients to how could I
clinically apply it so I started
researching I knew that I wasn’t gonna
start with the big diseases in my
practice I wasn’t gonna start with
muscular dystrophy multiple sclerosis
Parkinson’s disease Alzheimer’s ALS I
knew those would require large doses and
infusions of stem cells that we could
not yet apply in this country
systemically and so I knew I was gonna
start with the smaller diseases the
joint pathology tendon and ligament
types of problems so I was researching
the regenerative therapies available to
us in this country in the United States
and while I was doing this a friend of
mine happen to call me he’s 54 years old
and he said I fell off my bike a couple
weeks ago and I can’t lift my arm
the MRI says I have a complete tear of
one of my rotator cuff tendons something
I see every day two top orthopedic
surgeons in New York told him the only
way to fix this was to surgically repair
it and they were right when you have
complete tear of a tendon you have to
surgically reattach it my friend was
obviously looking for a non-surgical
option so I looked at his MRI first and
I thought I saw a tiny strand of tendon
still attached this was important
because it would give me the substrate
to work with so I went back to my
research and I started looking at the
hierarchy of regenerative treatments
available to us the first one is
something called platelet-rich plasma
which very simply is drawing blood from
a person spinning it to concentrate the
growth factors and then yury inject that
into the same person this had promise
but I didn’t think it was going to be
strong enough for this magnitude of
injury so the second level in the
hierarchy of treatment is what we call
either fat or bone marrow derived stem
cell treatments it’s a same-day
treatment we’re allowed to do it in the
u.s. you extract a small amount of fat
or bone marrow from the person you put
that product through a very
sophisticated centrifugation process
which concentrates the stem cells and
the growth factors and then yuri inject
that into someone and I thought this is
really getting a lot closer to what
I work for him but then I remembered
what I said that inverse relationship
between age and the number and potency
of the cells and I thought 54 year old
cells that might not work so I went to
the next level in the hierarchy of
treatment which is very different and
it’s the use of postnatally derived
tissue amniotic or placental or
umbilical cord labs around the u.s. are
permitted to isolate the growth factors
from that hours old product and then we
can inject that into somebody and I
thought hours old product versus 54 year
old stem cells it was kind of a
no-brainer in my mind and so I went back
to my friend and I said look there is
this product from I’m gonna use from
amniotic tissue growth factor I’m very
comfortable with the safety profile of
it but I have to tell you it’s super
expensive it will likely not be
reimbursed by insurance and it may not
work what do you think and so my friend
laughed and he said sure let’s try it
what do I have to lose so I injected him
with these growth factors and within two
weeks he had 30 degrees of movement
within six weeks he had full range of
motion this is unheard of in the world
of sports type injuries like this but it
was only a single case and I had to
repeat this in other cases so the next
case I did was a gentleman in his 70s
that I’ve treated for many years with
polio who had end-stage bone-on-bone
osteoarthritis of both of his knees and
he was facing joint replacements we both
knew that with his history of polio he
would end up in a wheelchair if he had
these surgeries so again we looked for a
non-surgical option I did the same thing
with him and within weeks he was walking
pain-free and he continues to walk
pain-free three years later I have since
repeated this in dozens of cases with
pretty remarkable results so I just want
to say before I conclude that first of
all every tissue and cell structure that
I’ve been talking about today is
harvested from afterbirth these are
products that would be thrown in the
trash they would be discarded so there
should be absolutely no ethical dilemma
with the use of these tissues or cells
the last thing I want to say in summary
is that I absolutely believe that the
future of medicine lies in the use of
biologic agents to regenerate not
synthetic agents to
I also believe that we can ease the
aging process and I believe in what
could be and I’d like to leave you with
one quick video this is a patient of
mine with muscular dystrophy who a year
and a half before to stem-cell
treatments had no balance and
coordination and was quickly losing her
ambulatory ability this this is what
could be thank you very much
[Applause]
story of what I believe is and a story
of what could be and I’m gonna start
this story with the image of this
beautiful young woman that I’ll call
Dania who is 28 years old in this
photograph Dania was brought to me at 14
years of age by her mother from Jamaica
with a rare progressive neuromuscular
degenerative disorder called spinal
muscular atrophy spinal muscular atrophy
is a genetic disorder whose hallmarks
are autoimmune disease and inflammatory
types of reactions it leads to
progressive weakness in muscles and
ultimately a decline or a collapse in
the spine that collapse crushes the
heart and lungs and would have killed
her very shortly I found a very
courageous spine surgeon in New York who
was willing to try to reverse some of
that curve and prolong her life in doing
so and to give her more time essentially
to spend with this miracle of hers her
daughter who is now 11 years old
Dainius 37 but she is declining from
this disease she has never walked by
herself she has never rolled over in a
bed by herself she has never bathed
herself she has never fed herself she
has been one of the most extraordinary
and important influences in my career
and for the last 23 years I can honestly
say there hasn’t been a day that’s gone
by that I don’t think about ways to try
to slow down progression of diseases
like this and I also know that if I knew
20 years ago what I know now I could
have done that for her so this is
obviously a very extreme case but I
challenge you and say that we are all
faced with autoimmune and inflammatory
types of diseases in our lives every day
aging is hallmarked by a process of
inflammatory reactions altered blood
flow to organs tissues and structures
that lead to degeneration so in fact we
could actually call aging a disease if
we wanted to we’re faced with it in the
form of thyroid diseases cardiac disease
diabetes lung diseases
dermatologic of diseases and arthritis
the most common of which is
osteoarthritis the prevalence of
osteoarthritis is actually staggering
somewhere in the neighborhood of about
50 million people suffer in the US alone
and about 1.5 billion in the world we
have a responsibility to try to slow
down the progression and the suffering
from diseases like this we also have
innate structures that are built-in that
help do this in the form of stem cells
now stem cells have a myriad of
functions but two of the functions that
I am particularly interested in are
inflammatory and something called
angiogenic angiogenesis is just a fancy
word that means to regrow blood vessels
and I just told you the two of the
hallmarks of the diseases associated
with aging are inflammatory and altered
blood flow this would be an amazing
mixture if we could just fit stem cells
into the treatment of these types of
entities that we all deal with now what
are stem cells what do they look like
this is an a solitary isolated stem cell
this isn’t a stem cell going through
cell division or mitosis these are stem
cells attached to blood vessels they
flatten out and they encircle the blood
vessels that’s where they live stem
cells also produce over 3,000 different
growth factors or what we call trophic
factors which are proteins and it’s
these little bundles or micro vesicles
that are really the sort of worker bees
these are the things that we’re looking
for but where do we isolate stem cells
and these growth factors from in fact we
can get these stem cells from almost any
tissue in the body but some of the most
plentiful and potent sources are
actually from post natal II derived
tissue umbilical cord amniotic fluid
placental tissue one single umbilical
cord can treat hundreds of patients this
is staggering to me there are a growing
number of countries around the world
that allow the processing of these forms
of stem cells from post natal tissue
some of them are listed here include
South Korea Japan Israel India Panama
the list goes on not yet in the United
States and I hope that’s coming very
soon I can imagine
therefore a world where we can harness
the power of these structures that we
have
about available to us one of the
challenges that we face is that there’s
an inverse relationship between our age
and the number and potency of stem cells
that we have so when we’re born you see
we have about one stem cell for every
10,000 or so bone marrow cells but by
the time were 80
we have only one stem cell for
approximately every two million this is
exponential attrition rate and it really
plays a big role when we’re trying to
decide where we’re gonna get the source
of cells or tissue to treat different
clinical conditions obviously as is the
case most of the time younger is better
so we are inundated in our lives through
the internet and social media with what
I call information overload how do we
sift through all this how do we know
what’s true how do we know it’s safe I
get articles almost every day from my
patients talking about cell types cell
safety cell harvesting cell culture cell
applications cell delivery cell
expansion to sell her not to self I
don’t know anymore it’s very confusing
now in the course of all this in my
career about 10 years ago I got very
sick I was infected with Lyme disease
which invaded my central nervous system
I had severe cognitive changes with
short-term memory loss word finding
difficulties which I’m experiencing
right now I had severe burning muscle
pain I had joint pain I had balance and
coordination problems I had low-grade
fevers I had fatigue I was really really
sick I had developed an autoimmune form
of a thyroid condition that I was told
was triggered by the Lyme disease
so I underwent almost a year of very
conservative management with both
intravenous and oral antibiotics and a
slew of other drugs to treat my symptoms
my side effects at the end of that year
I was definitely improved but I had
residual symptoms that I knew were
inflammatory in origin I had persistent
muscle pain joint pain the things I hear
from my patients every day I still had
my thyroid condition which was
autoimmune and they knew from all my
years of research that the answer for
these types of inflammatory conditions
was in the world of stem cells so I
decided finally to put my body where my
mouth was and I went off and received
intravenous infusions of stem cells
my recovery over the next weeks two
months was nothing short of remarkable
almost all of my symptoms that have been
had abated and Wow
look at that I returned to a normal
function of life but my bigger challenge
following this was how do I apply this
then to my patients to how could I
clinically apply it so I started
researching I knew that I wasn’t gonna
start with the big diseases in my
practice I wasn’t gonna start with
muscular dystrophy multiple sclerosis
Parkinson’s disease Alzheimer’s ALS I
knew those would require large doses and
infusions of stem cells that we could
not yet apply in this country
systemically and so I knew I was gonna
start with the smaller diseases the
joint pathology tendon and ligament
types of problems so I was researching
the regenerative therapies available to
us in this country in the United States
and while I was doing this a friend of
mine happen to call me he’s 54 years old
and he said I fell off my bike a couple
weeks ago and I can’t lift my arm
the MRI says I have a complete tear of
one of my rotator cuff tendons something
I see every day two top orthopedic
surgeons in New York told him the only
way to fix this was to surgically repair
it and they were right when you have
complete tear of a tendon you have to
surgically reattach it my friend was
obviously looking for a non-surgical
option so I looked at his MRI first and
I thought I saw a tiny strand of tendon
still attached this was important
because it would give me the substrate
to work with so I went back to my
research and I started looking at the
hierarchy of regenerative treatments
available to us the first one is
something called platelet-rich plasma
which very simply is drawing blood from
a person spinning it to concentrate the
growth factors and then yury inject that
into the same person this had promise
but I didn’t think it was going to be
strong enough for this magnitude of
injury so the second level in the
hierarchy of treatment is what we call
either fat or bone marrow derived stem
cell treatments it’s a same-day
treatment we’re allowed to do it in the
u.s. you extract a small amount of fat
or bone marrow from the person you put
that product through a very
sophisticated centrifugation process
which concentrates the stem cells and
the growth factors and then yuri inject
that into someone and I thought this is
really getting a lot closer to what
I work for him but then I remembered
what I said that inverse relationship
between age and the number and potency
of the cells and I thought 54 year old
cells that might not work so I went to
the next level in the hierarchy of
treatment which is very different and
it’s the use of postnatally derived
tissue amniotic or placental or
umbilical cord labs around the u.s. are
permitted to isolate the growth factors
from that hours old product and then we
can inject that into somebody and I
thought hours old product versus 54 year
old stem cells it was kind of a
no-brainer in my mind and so I went back
to my friend and I said look there is
this product from I’m gonna use from
amniotic tissue growth factor I’m very
comfortable with the safety profile of
it but I have to tell you it’s super
expensive it will likely not be
reimbursed by insurance and it may not
work what do you think and so my friend
laughed and he said sure let’s try it
what do I have to lose so I injected him
with these growth factors and within two
weeks he had 30 degrees of movement
within six weeks he had full range of
motion this is unheard of in the world
of sports type injuries like this but it
was only a single case and I had to
repeat this in other cases so the next
case I did was a gentleman in his 70s
that I’ve treated for many years with
polio who had end-stage bone-on-bone
osteoarthritis of both of his knees and
he was facing joint replacements we both
knew that with his history of polio he
would end up in a wheelchair if he had
these surgeries so again we looked for a
non-surgical option I did the same thing
with him and within weeks he was walking
pain-free and he continues to walk
pain-free three years later I have since
repeated this in dozens of cases with
pretty remarkable results so I just want
to say before I conclude that first of
all every tissue and cell structure that
I’ve been talking about today is
harvested from afterbirth these are
products that would be thrown in the
trash they would be discarded so there
should be absolutely no ethical dilemma
with the use of these tissues or cells
the last thing I want to say in summary
is that I absolutely believe that the
future of medicine lies in the use of
biologic agents to regenerate not
synthetic agents to
I also believe that we can ease the
aging process and I believe in what
could be and I’d like to leave you with
one quick video this is a patient of
mine with muscular dystrophy who a year
and a half before to stem-cell
treatments had no balance and
coordination and was quickly losing her
ambulatory ability this this is what
could be thank you very much
[Applause]
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