Panama City, Panama
Additional Tickets Released for Stem Cell Institute Public Seminar on Adult Stem Cell Therapy Clinical Trials in New York City May 17th, 2014 (via PRWeb)
Stem Cell Institute is releasing additional tickets for its Adult Stem Cell Therapy Clinical Trials seminar on Saturday, May 17, 2014 in New York City at the New York Hilton Midtown from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. New York, NY (PRWEB) May 02, 2014 Stem Cell…
New York, NY (PRWEB) April 09, 2014
The Stem Cell Institute, located in Panama City, Panama, will present an informational umbilical cord stem cell therapy seminar on Saturday, May 17, 2014 in New York City at the New York Hilton Midtown from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
Speakers include:
Neil Riordan PhD – “Clinical Trials: Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for Autism and Spinal Cord Injury”
Dr. Riordan is the founder of the Stem Cell Institute and Medistem Panama Inc.
Jorge Paz-Rodriguez MD – “Stem Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Disease: MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus”
Dr. Paz is the Medical Director at the Stem Cell Institute. He practiced internal medicine in the United States for over a decade before joining the Stem Cell Institute in Panama.
Light snacks will be served afterwards. Our speakers and stem cell therapy patients will also be on hand to share their personal experiences and answer questions.
Admission is free but space in limited and registration is required. For venue information and to register and reserve your tickets today, please visit: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/stem-cell-institute-seminar-tickets-11115112601 or call Cindy Cunningham, Patient Events Coordinator, at 1 (800) 980-7836.
About Stem Cell Institute Panama
Founded in 2007 on the principles of providing unbiased, scientifically sound treatment options; the Stem Cell Institute (SCI) has matured into the world’s leading adult stem cell therapy and research center. In close collaboration with universities and physicians world-wide, our comprehensive stem cell treatment protocols employ well-targeted combinations of autologous bone marrow stem cells, autologous adipose stem cells, and donor human umbilical cord stem cells to treat: multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases.
In partnership with Translational Biosciences, a subsidiary of Medistem Panama, SCI provides clinical services for ongoing clinical trials that are assessing safety and signs of efficacy for osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis using allogeneic umbilical cord tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSC), autologous stromal vascular fraction (SVF) and hU-MSC-derived mesenchymal trophic factors (MTF). In 2014, Translation Biosciences expects to expand its clinical trial portfolio to include spinal cord injury, heart disease, autism and cerebral palsy.
To-date, SCI has treated over 2000 patients.
For more information on stem cell therapy:
Stem Cell Institute Website: https://www.celllmedicine.com
Stem Cell Institute
Via Israel & Calle 66
Plaza Pacific Office #2A
Panama City, Panama
About Medistem Panama Inc.
Since opening its doors in 2007, Medistem Panama Inc. has developed adult stem cell-based products from human umbilical cord tissue and blood, adipose (fat) tissue and bone marrow. Medistem operates an 8000 sq. ft. ISO 9001-certified laboratory in the prestigious City of Knowledge. The laboratory is fully licensed by the Panamanian Ministry of Health and features 3 class 10000 clean rooms, class 100 laminar flow hoods, and class 100 incubators.
Medistem Panama Inc.
Ciudad del Saber, Edif. 221 / Clayton
Panama, Rep. of Panama
Phone: +507 306-2601
Fax: +507 306-2601
About Translational Biosciences
A subsidiary of Medistem Panama Inc., Translational Biosciences was founded solely to conduct clinical trials using adult stem cells and adult stem cell-derived products.
Translational Biosciences webSite: http://www.translationalbiosciences.com
Email: trials(at)translationalbiosciences(dot)com
Stem Cell Pioneers featured Dr. Riordan in its February installment of “Ask the Doctor”, a monthly segment that features stem cell scientists and doctors answering questions from readers about stem cell therapy.
Over the next several days, we will share these questions and Dr. Riordan’s answers with our readers.
Question for Dr. Riordan: If the FDA loosens regulations in the U.S., do you have any plans to open a clinic here?
Dr. Riordan’s Answer: Unfortunately I don’t see FDA loosening regulations any time soon so I have no plans to do anything in the U.S. using umbilical cord MSCs or even autologous SVF in the near future.
It would be great if the U.S. would follow Japan’s lead. The Japanese parliament passed legislation in November of last year that essentially allows a company to market a cell product after the product has been demonstrated to be safe. Quoting from an Athersys press release: “Recently, Japan’s parliament enacted new legislation to promote the safe and accelerated development of treatments using stem cells. The new regenerative medicine law and revised pharmaceutical affairs law define products containing stem cells as regenerative medicine products and allow for the conditional approval of such products if safety has been confirmed in clinical trials, even if their efficacy has not been fully demonstrated.”
So you can guess where everyone is running to and isn’t the U.S. Here are press releases from Mesoblast and Athersys, respectively:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/athersys-announces-patents-japan-stem-120000430.html
Regarding plans for the U.S., I have thankfully partnered with Dr. Wade McKenna, who is Board Certified in Orthopedic surgery and Fellowship trained in Trauma and Trauma Reconstructive Surgery. Dr. McKenna has more experience using bone marrow concentrate for orthopedic conditions that anyone I know. We are opening a regenerative orthopedic center in the Dallas area hopefully by mid-April of this year. It will be in a new building and is being built out now. The center is called the Riordan McKenna Institute. It is located in Southlake, Texas, which is between Dallas and Ft. Worth, very near DFW airport.
Stem Cell Pioneers featured Dr. Riordan in its February installment of “Ask the Doctor”, a monthly segment that features stem cell scientists and doctors answering questions from readers about stem cell therapy.
Over the next several days, we will share these questions and Dr. Riordan’s answers with our readers.
Question: Are there some conditions such as neurological ones that respond better when the cells are greatly expanded? Is a high quantity essential for success or is that something that may be more of a selling point at some clinics? I have also seen this advertised for COPD and other conditions. It’s almost like the more cells the better, but I would like your opinion.
Dr. Riordan’s Answer: That really depends on the quality of the cells after expansion. If they are still robust, not senescent, and still have a good secretion profile, then the more the better may be useful up to a point. If you take a small pool of starter cells and expand them to exhaustion, then I don’t think you are going to have a very good product. The MSCs used in Panama are not expanded beyond passage 5—a point at which there is no senescence in the population and they have a robust cytokine secretion profile. In order to use only cells that meet our release criteria, cells from approximately one (1.2 to be exact) out of 10 donated umbilical cords are used.
Contrast that to cells from a patient’s own fat tissue that are expanded. Firstly, the starting cells may, and many times are not very robust—they secrete little or no beneficial cytokines or chemokines, and must be expanded to hilt in order to hit the cell number. Please see my answer to number 7 for more on this subject.
This brings up a slightly different, yet related topic. There has been a lot of talk at recent meetings about more defined endpoints for the cells being used, and I couldn’t agree more. There are MSCs from bone marrow, menstrual blood, fat tissue, umbilical cord (even different parts of the umbilical cord—around the blood vessels, from the Wharton’s jelly, from the subepithelium, from the cord blood itself—which are most likely contaminants from a bruised placenta rather than the blood), teeth, amniotic membrane, amniotic fluid just to name sources in the “we didn’t mess with mother nature” adult stem cell world. Add to that the infinite variables when you consider the age and physical condition of the donor, particularly when using adipose or bone marrow as a source material and we, as a field, could be saying almost anything by using the term, “mesenchymal stem cell.” I think it is time that there is standardization in the field beyond the current definition of expressing/not expressing certain surface markers and the ability to differentiate into fat, bone, and cartilage. That standardization could come from using endpoints such as “remaining proliferative capacity (the number of doublings achievable in culture from the treatment cell bank), the secretome, even if there is standardization of one or two molecules, such as HGF, or one of the prostaglandins.
In the future I believe the field will take it a step further by measuring, even by a surrogate marker, the potential effects of the cells on the target condition. In the case of autoimmunity the cells and their secretions could be tested for their capacity to modulate the immune system. In the case of inflammatory conditions, the cells and their secretions could be tested for the ability to control or block inflammation.
Panama City, Panama (PRWEB) January 14, 2014
Translational Biosciences, a subsidiary of Medistem Panama has received the county’s first clinical trial approval for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) from the Comité Nacional de Bioética de la Investigación Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease in which the patient’s immune system generates cellular and antibody responses to various components of the joint such as type I collagen. As a result of this immune response, not only does joint destruction occur, but also other secondary complications such as pulmonary fibrosis, renal damage, and even heart damage. RA affects approximately 0.5-1% of the population in the United States.
Mesenchymal stem cells harvested from donated human umbilical cords after normal, healthy births possess anti-inflammatory and immune modulatory properties that may relieve RA symptoms. Because they are immune privileged, the recipient’s immune system does not reject them. These properties make MSC interesting candidates for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders.
Each patient will receive five intravenous injections of umbilical cord stem cells over the course of 5 days. They will be assessed at 3 months and 12 month primarily for safety and secondarily for indications of efficacy.
The stem cell technology being utilized in this trial was developed by Neil Riordan, PhD, founder of Medistem Panama. The stem cells will be harvested and processed at Medistem Panama’s 8000 sq. ft. laboratory in the prestigious City of Knowledge. They will be administered at the Stem Cell Institute in Panama City, Panama.
The Principle Investigator is Jorge Paz-Rodriguez, MD. Dr. Paz-Rodriguez also serves as the Medical Director at the Stem Cell Institute.
“While this is just the first step, it is our hope that Panama’s rapid emergence as a leader in applied stem cell research will lead to safe, effective treatments for debilitating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and serve to benefit all Panamanians who suffer from it in the not-too-distant future,” said Ruben Berocal, M.D., National Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT). “Oversight by the National Committee for Investigational Bioethics ensures patient safety by demanding ethical transparency and compliance with the highest levels of international standards,” he added.
For detailed information about this clinical trial visit http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. If you are a rheumatoid arthritis patient who has not responded to disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD) for at least 6 months you may qualify for this trial. Please email trials(at)translationalbiosciences(dot)com for more information about how to apply.
About Translational Biosciences
A subsidiary of Medistem Panama Inc., Translational Biosciences was founded solely to conduct clinical trials using adult stem cells and adult stem cell-derived products.
Translational Biosciences Web Site: http://www.translationalbiosciences.com
Email: trials(at)translationalbiosciences(dot)com
About Medistem Panama Inc.
Since opening its doors in 2007, Medistem Panama Inc. has developed adult stem cell-based products from human umbilical cord tissue and blood, adipose (fat) tissue and bone marrow. Medistem operates an 8000 sq. ft. ISO 9001-certified laboratory in the prestigious City of Knowledge. The laboratory is fully licensed by the Panamanian Ministry of Health and features 3 class 10000 clean rooms, class 100 laminar flow hoods, and class 100 incubators.
Medistem Panama Inc.
Ciudad del Saber, Edif. 221 / Clayton
Panama, Rep. of Panama
Phone: +507 306-2601
Fax: +507 306-2601
About Stem Cell Institute Panama
Founded in 2007 on the principles of providing unbiased, scientifically-sound treatment options, the Stem Cell Institute has matured into the world’s leading adult stem cell therapy and research center. In close collaboration with universities and physicians world-wide, our comprehensive stem cell treatment protocols employ well-targeted combinations of autologous bone marrow stem cells, autologous adipose stem cells, and donor human umbilical cord stem cells to treat: multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases. To-date, the Institute has treated over 2000 patients.
For more information on stem cell therapy:
Stem Cell Institute Website: https://www.celllmedicine.com
Stem Cell Institute
Via Israel & Calle 66
Plaza Pacific Office #2A
Panama City, Panama
Phone: +1 800 980-STEM (7836) (USA Toll-free) +1 954 636-3390 (from outside USA)
Fax: +1 866 775-3951 (USA Toll-free) +1 775 887-1194 (from outside USA)
Professor Caplan is “The father of the mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)”. In this clip, he describes a mouse experiment using human MSCs in a mouse model of MS. The experiment shows that it’s possible to place human cells in mice that have normal immune systems. He continues to discuss the astounding results.
Stem cell therapy recipient Ryan Benton’s follow-up album, Coming Together for a Cure
Now, a second volume is being released with a whole new line up, which includes Thee Oh Sees, Cave Singers, and members of Dr. Dog (via bands Golden Boots and Springs). Coming Together For A Cure, Vol. 2, which will be released 29 October, will also feature Benton’s band Sunshine Dreamers.
See the full track listing below, as well as a documentary about Benton’s triumphant recovery, against all odds, and how he has to travel outside of the U.S., where stem cell treatment is banned, to acquire his treatment.
Coming Together For A Cure, Vol. 2 Tracklist
01. Miracle Days – “Miracle Days”
02. Springs – “Waste My Time”
03. Thee Oh Sees – “The Factory Reacts”
04. The Wonder Revolution – “Cloud Wonder Sky”
05. Music Wrong – “Clyde”
06. Student Film – “Facts and Values”
07. Shine Brothers – “So Many People”
08. Elf Power – “1494″
09. Cave Singers – “Ohio Nights”
10. Golden Boots – “Be My Champ”
11. Gentle Ghost – “Oblivion Tide”
12. Sleeping in the Aviary – “Long Gone”
13. Sunshine Dreamers – “Empty Nest”
14. Bellafonte – “Sea of Trees”
15. Beau Jennings & the Tigers – “Sweet Action”
Zhang Z, Fu J, Xu X, Wang S, Xu R, Zhao M, Nie W, Wang X, Zhang J, Li T, Su L, Wang FS.
Research Center for Biological Therapy.
Link to Abstract on National Institutes of Health Website
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
HAART largely decreases morbidity and mortality in chronic HIV-1-infected patients, but immune nonresponders (INRs) with full viral suppression still fail to reverse the immune deficiency. This study evaluated the safety and immunological responses of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy in HIV-1-infected INRs.
DESIGN AND METHODS:
A total of 13 HIV-1-infected INRs were enrolled in this pilot prospectively open-labeled controlled clinical trial. Seven patients were administered three umbilical cord-MSC transfusions at 1-month interval during 12-months of follow-up, whereas six control patients were treated with saline in parallel. Immunological parameters were monitored in these patients throughout the trial.
RESULTS:
All patients tolerated the umbilical cord-MSC transfusions well throughout the trial. The umbilical cord-MSC transfusions preferentially increased circulating naive and central memory CD4 T-cell counts and restored HIV-1-specific IFN-γ and IL-2 production in the INRs. These enhancements in immune reconstitution were also associated with the reduction of systemic immune activation and inflammation in vivo.
CONCLUSIONS:
umbilical cord-MSC transfusions are well tolerated and can efficiently improve host immune reconstitution in INRs, suggesting that such treatments may be used as a novel immunotherapeutic approach to reversing immune deficiency in HIV-1-infected INRs (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01213186).
Offices included in the scope:
Ciudad del Saber, Edificio # 221, piso # 2,
Clayton, Ancón
Panama City, Republic of Panama
The scope includes the following activities:
Valid from 19, June 2016
Granted from Panama 20, June 2013
Antonio Martin
Director
IGC10126
