In the propaganda of hospitals of all colors, stem cells seem to cure all diseases, from diabetes, pediatric cerebral palsy, liver cancer, uremia, Alzheimer’s and even autism. Is this true? The media has already disclosed the oddities, so here is a compilation and analysis, hoping to provide some reference for children with cerebral palsy.
The mirage vision
The human body is a cellular kingdom composed of more than 200 different tissues and trillions of cells, which were first developed by differentiation of stem cells with high proliferation and differentiation potential.
Once an embryo develops and becomes a mature human body, most stem cells differentiate into ordinary cells. However, in the adult body, there are still a very small number of cells that maintain the ability to proliferate and form other types of cells, which are called adult stem cells. Although adult stem cells are not as all-powerful as embryonic stem cells, which can differentiate into all types of cells in the body, they can differentiate into many types of cells, for example, bone marrow-derived stem cells can differentiate into liver, pancreas, muscle and nerve cells.
Under some specific circumstances, stem cells are induced to differentiate into various tissue cells and then transplanted to patients, which can be used to repair some tissues and organs that were once considered non-renewable, and those incurable or intractable diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, liver failure, spinal cord injury, and Parkinson’s disease, have the hope of being cured.
It is not an easy task to translate the great potential of stem cells into a mature treatment. And a large number of hospitals in China are happy to take the potential of stem cells as a realistic treatment.
So-called stem cell treatment centers have been opened in hospitals ranging from tertiary hospitals down to small clinics in beauty salons. As of July 2012, the findings of the Office of Stem Cell Rectification Work of the Ministry of Health were – stem cell therapy has been carried out in about 300 hospitals and institutions in China. This is a self-check conducted by the Ministry of Health, and the hospitals themselves reported 300, and there are others that have not been reported? In reality there are more.
If you type in the words stem cell therapy in any search engine, there are various stem cell therapy centers from national to provincial level, and their names are very impressive – “China-US Stem Cell Therapy Center”, “National Stem Cell There are also many stem cell centers established under large tertiary hospitals.
From spinal cord injury to autism, pediatric cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s disease, liver cirrhosis to liver cancer, psoriasis, rheumatoid, uremia, diabetes, all the difficult diseases that modern medicine can’t do anything about can be cured by stem cell therapy.
In fact, except for hematopoietic stem cells to treat blood diseases, the Ministry of Health has not approved any medical institution to use stem cells to clinically treat any kind of diseases, and the vast majority of stem cell research worldwide is at the animal experimental or clinical stage, except for Canada, which approved a stem cell drug produced by a U.S. company for the treatment of graft-versus-host disease in May this year.
Many stem cell therapy organizations also claim to have collaborations with Harvard University and Rockefeller Medical Center in the U.S. and have published papers in prestigious academic journals such as Nature and Science. In fact, Nature has written an article criticizing the proliferation of stem cell therapies in China almost every year since 2009.
Deceived and compromised
Most patients cannot distinguish the vast gulf between theoretical feasibility, clinical trials, and clinical treatment. In the medical field, the development of a theoretically viable laboratory-based technology to a mature clinical treatment technology is a long and complex process that involves years of rigorous preclinical and clinical trials, and even many setbacks and failures.
If you dial the hotline of the stem cell treatment center of a certain hospital, you will be told that stem cell treatment for cerebral palsy is definitely effective, and the younger the child is, the better the effect. The child is still so young, even if there is only one percent hope, the parents have to give it a try, as parents are in the mood. The doctor will suggest to give the child a few tens of thousands of stem cells injection, the price is about 100,000 yuan, when the parents show financial difficulties, the doctor then tells you that a little less stem cells injection effect can also be done, the cost is lower. In fact, for patients who are a little less well-off, doctors will recommend cheaper treatments. For example, from intravenous infusion or doing lumbar puncture injection, which cost 50,000, etc.
When parents ask about the risks of stem cell surgery, they are told that it is a relatively mature and safe technology with little risk, and never told that it is in the experimental stage.
According to Nature, a certain stem cell transplant center in Changchun, Jilin, claims to have treated more than 10,000 patients with various diseases, while a stem cell company in Shenzhen also claims to have provided stem cell treatment technology to more than 9,000 patients.
In a QQ group called “Identifying Diseases to Defeat Scammers”, netizen “Douzhi” spent tens of thousands of yuan in a hospital in Shanghai for the treatment of diabetes, and established the group to defend his rights. The group is full of patients or families of patients from all over the country, many of whom come from small towns in the Midwest and have low incomes, and have invested tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in stem cell treatments for diabetes, hepatitis B, and pediatric cerebral palsy, but without exception, they have all gone down the drain – their conditions have not improved at all.
Unpredictable risks
In fact, except for hematopoietic stem cell therapy for blood diseases, which is a mature medical technology, almost all stem cell therapies are in clinical trials or pre-clinical stage.
There is nothing hotter than the treatment of diabetes and neurological diseases with stem cells in China right now. With over tens of millions of diabetic patients and children with cerebral palsy in China, this is a gold-sucking tool.
If you’ve been sick for a long time, you’ve been to every place and still can’t solve your problem. Stem cell therapy is like a lifesaver, a ray of light. When you are really desperate, patients tend to believe that such things can save them.
It is the expectation of patients that certain medical institutions exploit to sell expensive stem cell treatments to patients suffering from persistent diseases, which are not yet based on adequate science, lack of transparency, and no monitoring mechanism.
Stem cell therapy for neurological diseases such as pediatric cerebral palsy is quite far from clinical application. Unlike other cells, such as islet cells, which can secrete insulin once they grow up, nerve cells have to not only grow up but also establish a proper neural network system in the body, so it is difficult. When it comes to stem cell transplantation, most hospitals use intravenous infusions and lumbar puncture injections. Some big hospitals have stereotactic technology to implant stem cells in specific brain tissues by drilling holes in the head, which not only cannot establish a neural network system with the original brain cells at all, but also the damage of the implantation may cause a change of gait into ischemic gait, and if the implanted stem cells survive, they may form tumor-like proliferation (about 30% incidence), leading to serious consequences of brain damage.
As far as the current research is concerned, stem cells are the most promising treatment for autoimmune diseases. Stem cells are a population of cells with immunomodulatory functions, and the only stem cell drug that has received marketing approval for clinical use worldwide is for the treatment of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), an immune system disorder.
In light of the rampant stem cell therapy, the Chinese Medical Association Diabetes Society issued a statement in late 2010 that stem cell therapy for diabetes is still in the pre-clinical application research phase and that stem cell transplantation techniques are not recommended as routine clinical practice. It was also mentioned that when clinical trials are conducted, no fees should be charged to the participating diabetic patients.
Stem cell technology is not a conventional treatment in terms of either laws and regulations or clinical practice, but some institutions in China actually charge according to conventional medical treatment and carry out the treatment in a big way, which is unfair and harmful to patients.
The purpose of clinical treatment is to solve the patient’s health problems, and it is to solve the patient’s health problems with recognized and already researched and proven safe and effective methods. Clinical trials, on the other hand, are about gaining knowledge that we don’t yet know, and subjects are contributing to science and taking risks, so how can they be burdened with high medical costs while taking risks?
Regarding risk, a statement from the International Society for Stem Cell Research says that stem cells and their derivatives may act on multiple target organs and tissues and therefore have both good and bad effects, most commonly the risk of abnormal tissue and tumor formation.
Humans do not know enough about stem cells, and many side effects of stem cell therapy are unknown and uncontrollable. Now there is a view that the safety of stem cell therapy is not bad and there is no big mess because it is not long enough, it is only 14 years from the first isolation of human embryonic stem cells and no one can say how safe the stem cells are.
The out-of-control stem cell therapy was criticized by foreign counterparts and the media, and the Ministry of Health launched a one-year rectification of stem cell clinical research and application regulation in January 2012 – before July 1, 2012, it was prohibited to try any unapproved use of stem cells in treatment and clinical trials, and stopped accepting applications for new stem cell projects .
More blatantly, an April report in Nature magazine mentioned that Shanghai’s So-and-So Medical claimed to have successfully cured a range of diseases, including multiple sclerosis, using stem cells derived from umbilical cords or adipose tissue; Jilin’s So-and-So Stem Cell Transplant Center introduced their stem cell therapy to treat autism; and Beijing’s So-and-So International Hospital Stem Cell Therapy Center also offers stem cell therapy for autism. .
The huge profit drive and the lack of regulatory system have led to the chaotic situation of stem cell therapy in China. The price of stem cell therapy is quite expensive, according to Nature magazine, the cost of stem cell therapy for autism at Beijing’s Somewhere International Hospital is RMB 200,000. 50,000; for Alzheimer’s disease (dementia) treatment with stem cells at Shanghai Somewhere Medical, four to eight injections are required, and the cost of each injection ranges from 30,000 to 50,000.
In contrast to the huge benefits, there are almost no rules for stem cell research and application in China. The Ministry of Health and the Drug Administration have neither clarified who will regulate stem cells nor issued relevant technical standards and management norms in the past 13 years.
Before 2005, stem cells, like somatic cells, belonged to drugs and were under the jurisdiction of the FDA; in 2005, an internal document of the Ministry of Health defined stem cells as a medical technology and was managed by the Ministry of Health; in 2007, an internal document of the FDA officially confirmed the withdrawal from the management of stem cells; in 2009, the Ministry of Health officially confirmed that stem cells were defined as a Class III medical technology and before entering the clinic, they had to In 2009, the Ministry of Health officially confirmed that stem cells are defined as a Class III medical technology, and before entering the clinic, they have to pass the safety demonstration and ethical review organized by the Ministry.
To date, no medical institution has received permission from the Ministry of Health to use stem cells for clinical treatment of pediatric cerebral palsy or other diseases.
Although stem cells are defined as a Class III medical technology, there are no specific rules for implementation. This means that anyone can do stem cells and say their own standard, no department will control it, and there is no basis for the control. Moreover, the country’s practitioner law allows hospitals to conduct experimental treatments, and a large number of medical institutions are skipping the clinical trial stage and going directly to clinical applications under the guise of experimental stem cell treatments.
The Ministry of Health’s stem cell ban ended on July 1, 2012, and illegal stem cell treatments are still blossoming everywhere. The Ministry of Health has organized two expert meetings to discuss the regulation of stem cell research and application and related technical standards, which are expected to be introduced soon.