A Board Certified Plastic Surgeon in Scottsdale
Posts tagged Stem Cells
ASPS Panel: Suspicious Stem Cell Claims.
01 year ago
Scottsdale – The American Society of Plastic Surgeons just wrapped up its Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada. At the “Hot Topics”, which is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of this annual plastic surgeon get-together, stem cell claims came up as a topic of great discussion. A recent article in Plastic Surgery Products states that “Any doctor advertising stem cells for cosmetic surgery is basically selling snake oil right now. And ballyhooed fat-based breast enhancements pose a cancer risk”.
A top panel of experts came up with an overarching message for anyone looking to improve their appearance through cutting-edge cosmetic techniques: “buyer beware.” That is especially the case for stem cell procedures now being promoted on the Internet as a fountain of youth for facelift and other body contouring surgery. “Be cautious of any doctor who is promoting these procedures,” California plastic surgeon Robert Singer, MD, FACS, says of stem cell cosmetics. “This is a marketing term, and I can tell you at this point it’s a marketing scam.”
Peter Rubin, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, says there remains no clinical data to show that stem cells can regenerate a youthful facial appearance. Indeed, he says, there is no known plastic surgical procedure for even extracting and isolating them for such use. “This is an area where I’d urge our (patients) to exercise great caution when confronted with promises,” says Dr. Rubin.
The ASPS panel also heard about a newly touted technique of using fat injections for breast enlargement, and as an alternative to breast implants, may increase the risk of breast cancer. “Fat cells release a hormone called leptin that can promote the growth of breast cancer cells, especially those that are estrogen dependent”, says V. Leroy Young, MD, FACS, a St Louis-based plastic surgeon.
Stem cells shown to repair damaged heart cells.
01 year ago
by Dr. Aldo
in Heart Disease
Stem Cells in Medicine Today.
Scottsdale – Research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN along with Belgian collaborators, have demonstrated that “guided” human adult stem cells can effectively heal, repair and regenerate damaged heart tissue. The findings — called “landmark work” in an accompanying editorial — appear in today’s Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
According to the summary on Bio-Medicine.org, stem cells isolated from patients have normally a limited capacity to repair the heart. This innovative technology boosts the regenerative benefit by programming adult stem cells to acquire a cardiac-like profile. Primed by a cocktail of recombinant cardiogenic growth factors, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) harvested from the bone marrow of a cohort of patients with coronary artery disease showed “superior functional and structural benefit without adverse side effects” over a 1-year follow-up in a model of heart failure according to the study.
“These findings provide proof-of-principle that “smart” adult stem cells have added benefit in repairing the heart, providing the foundation for further clinical evaluation,” says Andre Terzic, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic researcher and senior investigator of the study. “The successful use of guided “lineage specified” human stem cells is based on natural cardiogenic cues” adds Atta Behfar, M.D., Ph.D. first author of the study. The pre-clinical data reported in this seminal paper have cleared the way for safety and feasibility trials in humans, which were recently conducted in Europe.
In their editorial, Eduardo Marban, M.D., Ph.D., and Konstantinos Malliaras, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, in Los Angeles describe the Mayo approach as a “boot camp” for stem cells and also write that the study ” provides the first convincing evidence that MSCs, at least in vitro, can in fact become functional cardiomyocytes (heart cells) ”
I feel this study is really ground-breaking. Previously, regeneration of human heart cells was thought to be quite limited or impossible. In the future, perhaps stem cells for heart regeneration could help those with heart disease.
