The New York Times reported a case of a patient treated with stem cells that it seems to have caused a rare cancer.
Doctor Felipe Torres, specialist in cell regeneration, cleared a lot of doubts that the patients have when receiving this kind of therapies.
The stem cell treatment is a procedure that uses undifferentiated cells to make tissues grow. The treatments of this type are shooting up in United States. Recently, The New York Times reported a case of a patient that in order to regenerate his heart after a heart attack, received stem cells that probably caused a rare cancer. This caused concern because this are freely commercialized treatments without any test or clinical essay, at a high cost. To clear doubts Semana.com talked with Felipe Torres, an expert in the topic.
Semana.com: What is the stem cell therapy about?
Felipe Torres: Stem cells are used to stimulate damaged tissue or organs that need regeneration or adaptation. The treatment is divided in various concepts and different types. There are treatments with totipotent and autologous stem cells that can be extracted from fat, medulla, patients own tissues and even umbilical cord. There are pluripotent cells for specific tissue; they can be for skin or other tissues. There are also heterologous treatments, form laboratory cultures that normally are tissue specific somatic cells that can be from an animal and assist the regeneration process.
Semana.com: Are they restricted treatments?
F.T: There really isn’t a restriction, but nor a regulating legislation. There currently are a legislation to treat with specific autologous tissue in articulations like arthrosis or degenerative diseases. There are studies being done in different places, from United States to Europe, with a lot of advances.
Semana.com: But if they are popularising is because they promise to treat a lot of diseases, is that so?
F.T: Unfortunately what is shown to the world is that this treatments can treat everything but it really isn’t like that. For example, a treatment that needs a complete mechanical restauration or a very advanced disease can’t achieve a total repair with stem cells. What I want to say with this? Is that if you have a very advanced arthrosis, that needs an articular replacement, there are not possibilities to achieve a tissue repair. Another example: a patient that have his thyroid extracted because of a cancer and have a thyroid cell implanted, it won’t work because it can’t stimulate a new thyroid.