CHENNAI: For nearly three years, Sundar (26) was waiting to be told that he could to regain control of his bladder and move around. Sundar, who fell off a tree, injured his spine and was paralyzed below the navel. In 2011, when doctors at Laksha Hospital in Chennai told him there was hope in the stem cell therapy trials, he signed the consent form. 

 

Mumbai-based Dr B S Rajput, consultant orthopaedic and stem cell transplant surgeon at Breach Candy Hospital, told him he would inject stem cells drawn from his own body into him to repair the shredded network of nerves crisscrossing the spinal cord. At a press conference on Monday, Sundar, a farmer, walked with support, and smiled at flashing media cameras. "I tried everything before agreeing for stem cell therapy. I was told there is no hope of walking again and I was bed ridden. I chose stem cell therapy as I had no other option. Now, I have complete bladder and bowel control," he said, shaking hands with Dr Rajput. 

 

In 2008, Sundar suffered a serious spine injury after a fall from a tree. After initial treatment, doctors told him he had suffered post-traumatic paraplegia and that he would have to remain on bed. Sundar then met Laksha Hospital managing director Dr Senthil Kumar who told him about Dr Rajput and his experience in stem cell therapy. After the informed consent form was signed, Sundar was brought for trial on April 26, 2011. 

 

Dr Senthil Kumar and Dr Rajput hope Sundar's condition would further improve over time. They did a similar transplant on a 4-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. "It's a trial, but these tiny cells are helping us build big hopes," said Dr Senthil Kumar.

By the time Dr. Spencer Misner had carved away the dead and diseased flesh from Bobby Rice’s right foot last year, little remained other than bones and tendons.

 

“I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t look real. It looked like something out of a movie,” recalled Rice, a Whitfield County resident.

 

Today, the ankle has almost completely healed. It looks like Rice had simply scraped it. And Rice’s foot has largely healed, too. Misner credits cutting-edge stem cell treatments for saving Rice’s foot and leg.

 

Rice, who has diabetes, stepped on a piece of glass last fall and his foot quickly became infected. After trying a home remedy, Rice eventually went to Dalton’s Hamilton Medical Center emergency room, where doctors found he had a rapidly spreading necrotizing fasciitis, or in layman’s terms, flesh-eating bacteria.

 

Physicians treated the infection with antibiotics. However, Rice had one toe amputated. Doctors had to strip away much of the flesh from Rice’s foot and a great deal of flesh along his ankle.

 

“We did what we had to do,” Misner said. “We got the infection out. We saved his life. But what do you do next? We’d normally say all you can do now is cut of his leg so he can get on with his life.”

 

But Misner had another idea. He contacted Ed Fickey, a sales representative for Osiris Therapeutics and asked about using the company’s new stem cell technologies to rebuild the foot and ankle.

 

Stem cells can grow and differentiate into many different types of cells. Stem cell treatments introduce these cells into damaged or diseased organs to repair them.

 

“The problem is that Bobby is an indigent patient and didn’t have the financial resources. Ed spoke to the company, and they agreed to donate the products for free,” Misner said.

 

Osiris provided two products called Grafix and Ovation. Fickey said they are made from adult stem cells derived from donated placenta and do not come from embryos.

 

“They hadn’t had a case of this magnitude before,” Misner said. “Stem cells are starting to be used pretty extensively. They are used on burn patients to regenerate skin. But this involves muscle, bone, tendon, fat, skin, so many types of tissues.”

 

Misner said he asked the company for some guidelines.

 

“They basically said, ‘You let is know what the guidelines are because we don’t have a record of anything like this being done before.’ I did a literature search, and I couldn’t find anything like this before,” Misner said. “They did connect me with a doctor in Washington, D.C. who has used stem cells quite a bit. But when I sent him the pictures (of Rice’s foot and ankle), he basically said ‘Good luck.” He helped me with some general guidelines, but there was no recipe to follow.”

 

Misner started the treatments in November 2011, and Fickey recalls just how tricky it was.

 

“He (Misner) had a syringe, and he was looking for some tissue to push it into. But there was nothing but bone there,” he said. “Now, there’s a whole fleshy foot.”

 

Misner has applied the stem cell treatments nine times now, and he describes the foot as more than 90 percent healed. He had to perform the first treatments in an operating room at Hamilton Medical Center because of how complicated they were. But he has been able to do the last few treatments in his office. He expects to have to do at least three more before the foot has completely regenerated.

 

Fickey said Osiris has been watching “the Dalton foot” very closely.

 

“Each time we do an application, I send the latest pictures back, and they have always been very impressed. They wanted to see if there has been muscle growth and the answer has been yes. They wanted to see if there has been vascularization, blood flow, and there has been,” Fickey said. “The most impressive thing is that Bobby has feeling back. We were here a couple of weeks ago and the nurse tickled his foot and he kind of jumped. We didn’t expect that. Now, we are starting to have some other cases around and we can tell them ‘This is what we want to see.’”

 

Rice said he never dreamed he would regain his foot.

 

“I know what it looked like. I expected he would just have to take it off. To see where it is today is just amazing,” he said.

This evening "Piers Morgan Tonight" welcomed actress and author Suzanne Somers for an endearing and engaging primetime exclusive.
 

Well-known for her television roles as Chrissy Snow on "Three's Company" and Carol Lambert on "Step by Step," Somers opened up about her recent bout with breast cancer, detailing her choice to fore-go radiation in favor of alternative treatment:
 

"They took the fat from my stomach – boo hoo – and, this is in lay speak, in a sophisticated technology like a centrifuge, whipped it around at supersonic speed, and extracted my stem cells, separated them, cleaned them, discarded the weak ones, took the strong stem cells in a small amount of that fat, made it rich with my stem cells and then, again, for lack of a better term, took a turkey baster and injected into this breast, and poof! Wow!"

The face – and legs – behind the infamous infomercials for Thighmaster, Somers told Piers Morgan that her type of surgery may be the first step in tremendous medical progress:
 

"It is the blood vessels and the nerve growing," said the 65-year-old Somers. "To me, the ramifications of what this can mean for the future uses of stem cells, I think of our enlisted people and we're not that far away from being able to regrow limbs. I hope this just opens the door a little bit."

 

Watch the clip, and listen to the interview, as the author of the new book “Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Define Aging” shared specific details about how her body looks, and feels, today.  Paste on your browser:

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/07/suzanne-somers-on-stem-cell-surgery-were-not-that-far-away-from-being-able-to-regrow-limbs/?hpt=pm_mid

He'll earn a comfortable $18million for the 2012 season!
 

Adult stem cells saved quarterback Peyton Manning’s career following a neck injury that kept him sidelined for the entire 2011-12 National Football League season.
 

After two earlier surgeries failed to correct a painful bulging disc in his neck, Manning, now a Denver Bronco, traveled to Switzerland where he underwent one or more cutting-edge treatments that involved injecting his own adult stem cells directly into his neck.
 

Thirty-six-year-old Manning’s amazing recovery and his $18 million first-year Broncos contract, have dramatically increased public interest in the growing field of regenerative medicine.  Some of the nation’s best-trained regenerative medicine doctors practice right here in Colorado.
 

One such expert is Dr. Bernard “Ben” Guiot, a neurosurgeon affiliated with Littleton Adventist Hospital and South Denver Neurosurgery, who this week discussed adult stem cell treatments in an exclusive interview.
 

Dr. Guiot regularly uses adult stem cells in his surgical practice, which specializes in spinal issues.  Moreover, Dr. Guiot helps educate other physicians nationwide about the various cell-based therapies that are now available throughout the United States.
 

“There are a huge number of patients who suffer from neck pain and from low back pain,” says Dr. Guiot.  “While we have a number of non-operative therapies that we do use to try to make these patients better, regrettably, there’s still a large percentage of patients who ultimately require an operation.”
 

According to a report released today by CBS News, more than 1.2 million Americans undergo spinal surgery each year – 25% of which are spinal fusions.  The total is more than triple the number of coronary by-pass surgeries and nearly four times the number of hip replacements. In fact, CBS News says that eight out of ten Americans will experience debilitating back pain sometime in their lives.
 

Dr. Guiot works to provide relief to back pain sufferers.
 

The Denver neurosurgeon is coordinating his cutting-edge efforts closely with Celling Biosciences, an Austin, Texas-based biomedical innovator, to provide a surgical treatment – using the patient’s own stem cells – aimed at promoting fusion, the biological process where bone knits together. Standard surgical treatments, using screws, rods and plates often don’t result in the desired outcome.
 

“Stem cells seem to be a very promising [method]” Dr. Guiot says, adding that he and Celling Biosciences hope to expand cell-based therapies to other spinal applications as well as to orthopedic and non-orthopedic treatments.

 While Dr. Guiot has already fully integrated stem cells into his practice for fusion-related surgery, he says the future holds the promise of also using Celling Biosciences medical technologies to decrease inflammation of the joint, to regenerate joint services, and to improve function, among other therapies.

 

THANX TO PAMELA COTE  

 

Tyler Biermann is a lot like other sixth grade boys. He loves working on his computer, playing video games, riding a bike and watching television. He has a silly sense of humor and is very curious about the world around him.

 

What makes Tyler so very special is the great physical hurdles he has overcome in the past 12 years of his life to be able to do the things that most boys his age seem to do so effortlessly.

When Tyler was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, causing a lack of oxygen to his brain that led to Tyler suffering a stroke during delivery. The stroke caused damage to the back of Tyler’s brain. Tyler was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and his mother, Lisa Biermann, was told to expect the worst: a child who would never walk, talk, or have any chance at a normal life.

 

Lisa refused to give up hope. She tried everything she could to help Tyler. Tyler could not walk because his feet would not sit flat on the floor. She tried botox injections every three months, braces, casts and even ankle cord surgery. Nothing worked.

 

Lisa said Tyler could not communicate with her at all. She never knew when he was in pain because he was unable to tell her.

 

Tyler was considered to be blind, with a prescription that was over nine units nearsighted, and his eyes jumped around. Even with glasses, he could not focus his vision, and doctors did not believe he could see, or ever would see.

 

Until he was 8 years old, Lisa would carry Tyler from his classes at Woodland Park Elementary.

 

When Tyler was 8, he had a seizure.  A USA stem cell doctor heard about Tyler and offered to help him with umbilical cord stem cell therapy. Lisa said she thought hard about it, and because she had tried everything else and nothing had worked, she decided to try the stem cell therapy, which she was assured (correctly) that it had no serious side effects.

 

In December 2007, Lisa took Tyler to Mexico for the treatment, which had to be done in Tijuana because stem cells injection was not legal in the United States. 

Nor is it today, five years later.   Nor will it be anytime this decade, according to Don Margolis .  Three months later, they went for a second injection.

 

The stem cells were given to Tyler intravenously for a period of approximately 45 minutes.

 

Lisa said within weeks, she saw monumental changes in Tyler. All the milestones he never reached as a baby, he began reaching.

 

Within three months Tyler could put his feet flat on the floor and could walk independently. At six months post-treatment, he no longer needed the painful braces that gave him bunions.

 

Also within the first three months, Tyler took off his glasses and told Lisa, “no see, Mom.” When Lisa took Tyler to the eye doctor, his vision had improved from nine units nearsighted to 5.5. At six months post-treatment he had improved to four units. He is now at about 1 unit nearsighted and his doctor does not believe that he needs to wear his glasses. Even more impressive is that he can communicate and answer questions posed by the eye doctor.

 

In fact, Tyler, who could not communicate at all before his stem cell treatment, can now say hundreds of words. He can recite the alphabet. Tyler can spell and is even starting to read. He makes the honor roll and has received two spotlight awards from school for his progress.

 

Tyler helps with household chores, can walk up and down the stairs and pour himself something to drink. In December, he decided that he wanted to ride a bike and could not be discouraged from trying. To her great surprise, Lisa said Tyler not only climbed onto his friend’s bike, but he started peddling as well.

 

There have been setbacks along the way. Last April, Lisa took Tyler to the doctor because his blood pressure was very high. The doctor noticed that Tyler had no pulse in his legs and had an MRI performed.

 

The MRI showed that Tyler had a rare birth defect. He only had two heart valves and his aorta was pinched. The MRI also showed that Tyler’s veins and arteries had formed a web around his heart and major organs to supply them with blood. Lisa credits the stem cells for protecting Tyler’s organs.

 

Tyler had surgery to repair his aorta and has recovered well.

 

“He improves every single day,” Lisa said.

 

Lisa hopes to take Tyler for another stem cell treatment this summer. She wants everyone to know that there is hope and shares her experiences and links to others’ stories on her website, www.stemcellhelps.com.