SVF Stem Cell Therapy For Neuropathy, MS, ALS, Knee Replacement, Shoulder Replacement

In this Good Morning Texas segment, Dr. Bill Johnson explains how SVF Stem Cell Therapy can be used for Neuropathy, MS, ALS, knee replacement, and shoulder replacement. A full transcript of the conversation is listed below.

SVF Stem Cell Therapy For Neuropathy, MS, ALS, Knee Replacement, Shoulder Replacement

Full Transcript
 

HOST: Well, we often hear about stem cell therapy in the news and in magazines. We see this word used a lot. But what’s really happening to advance this type of therapy?

 

Well, Dr. Bill Johnson of Innovations Medical has just returned from a conference. He is here to tell us about some of the latest developments, and some of them are really exciting, Dr. J.

 

DR. J: Really some exciting things going on. We’re talking about using your own fat to get your own stem cells and then giving them back to you for therapeutic reasons – to fix things that we’ve not been able to fix in the past – and one of the really piece of the update is there’s more and more research showing that using cells that come from fat are effective in this. That’s important because probably the most common question we get is why we’re not using bone marrow cells.

 

HOST: Okay. Yeah, right.

 

DR. J: And the reason we don’t like bone marrow is fat’s easier to get and we can get much larger numbers. With bone marrow, you typically have to culture the cells to get enough to use, and when you do that, most people have to go outside the country to use them. When we use your fat, we don’t have to do that, we don’t have to culture them. And, with studies showing that it’s effective, we’re really feeling better and better about fat all the time.

 

HOST: Okay. This is actually a really huge advancement that you’re bringing to us today. So, once you have those stem cells from fat – not from bone marrow – how important is it how we use them?

 

DR. J: Well, the process of getting the cells out of the fat has become really standardized. We’re getting 50 to 100 million stem cells every time we do it. And so, it’s no longer a mystery, there’s no longer a lot of work going into how to get the cells. Where all the work is coming is how do we use the cells once we have them and this became more and more apparent that how we use them is critical in the response we get.

 

Just as an example, a year ago, when we first started, if someone came in with knee problems, needing knee replacement, we’re going to try and help them. We gave all the stem cells into the knee. Now, we give part of the stems cells into the knee and part of the stem cells in the vein because it’s been shown that, when we use both, we get a more consistent response, a more complete response. So, we’re learning more and more that how we deliver the cells is really critical in how well they work.

 

HOST: Okay. So, can patients do anything before the deployment to help out that response?

 

DR. J: Well, that’s a question that’s more and more coming up. How do we make the response better? And one of the really interesting things that’s come from that is that we need a little inflammation to really make this effective and we’ve got an animation here that shows why because, when we cut ourselves or cut our finger, what happens is the damaged cells release growth factors and the growth factors are what call the stem cells in and stimulate them to multiply and do the healing.

 

So, because of that, if, for instance, you have an arthritic joint and you’re on an anti-inflammatory, we now realize that we need to stop that a few days ahead of time so we’ve got a little inflammation area and that’s going to enhance the ability of the stem cells to work. We’re also starting to use some techniques like Acoustic Wave Therapy which we’ve used before for cellulite and other things. We can produce a little bit of inflammation with that and, again, producing that little bit of inflammation really enhances the ability of the stem cells to target where we’re going and then do what we want them to do when they get there.

 

HOST: Okay. So, you’re hopeful that this is going to help with so many different diseases. In fact, there’s been some good advancements that suggest ALS may benefit from it.

 

DR. J: Yeah, I think one of the very most exciting advancements is we now have a neurosurgeon out in California that’s placing a port that goes into the cerebral spinal fluid right around the brain. It’s an easy little out-patient procedure. Actually, it only takes about ten minutes to do. And that allows us to inject the stem cells directly into the fluid around the brain.

 

Right now, we’re doing it just as a target. By next year, we should be able to use this for patients with ALS. There’s some real hope for all these people that are getting there. The ice bucket challenge may really help to get some real hope for stem cell work on ALS. There’s some real good hope for multiple sclerosis Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease – a lot of these neurologic disorders that previously we’ve had very few ways of making a real difference.

 

HOST: Okay. This is just a year that you’ve been bringing this to GMT and these advancements are really exciting. So, obviously, one more year is going to yield hopefully even better results and better after-stories as well, right?

 

DR. J: We’re really, really excited about it, and with all these new changes, from now till the end of September, we’re going to go back to our introductory price. We’d let prices go up and we’re going to go back to our original price in September because we now know some more that we didn’t know a year ago.

 

HOST: That’s great. Dr. J, thanks for the update today.