stem cells from menstrual blood

[Vancouverman]

Hello dear community,
I read an interesting research article about stem cells wich are easy obtainable and not cancerogenous in lab tests like embryonic stem cells. They call it Endometrial Regenerative Cells (ERC) which are simply derived from the menstrual blood. And they promise to be better than bone-marrow and umbilicord derived stem cells.

http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/5/1/57

These ERC cells produce growth and tissue-healing factors 10 000 fold higher levels than traditional bone-marrow stem cells. Also they can produce all the lineage cells for lung tissue needed because they can differentiate into all three germ lines. And they dont have the possibility of immune rejection. Therefore a company named MediSteminc wants to produce allogenic off the shelf stem cells. And the production cost for these stem cells will be very cheap ! That would increase competition in the market. They dont need bone marrow extraction anymore and they can get rapidly expanded in laboratory and it is allogenic which means a womans ERC stem cell can also be used for other people.

One cell of these stem cells can get expaned for 68 doublings without evidence for cancerous or other functional abnormalities and the potential is enough to treat every person on this world by that. Thats what they say in this article. It is breath-taking.

I wish I had my own medical laboratory and a trained biologist. I wonder how much money it costs to produce these stem cells in a lab ?? Because we could expand these cells and inject it ourself. Then we dont need to pay 10000 dollars for unmotivated doctors.

Best regards
Franz

and this is the URL for the medisteminc
http://medisteminc.com/

[barbara]

Franz - Tom Ichim, CEO of MediStem, Inc. is hosting Ask the Doctor next month. If you have any questions for him, please send them to me by private message. Tom says these cells can be used for lung repair as well as other conditions. Tom has always been very kind when asked to participate in this forum and I consider him a real innovator and a friend.

[Vancouverman]

Hello Barbara,
thanks. Yes I already had an email conversation with him and asked him some questions. Overall he seems to be very friendly. But my impression is he is mostly a business man. These products like Endometrial Regenerative Cells ERC are produced in Panama where they have a laboratory. But they may also produce it in the US. It costs them less than 500 $ but I assume it is even much more cheaper because they are always using the same womans stem cell for allogenic use. They sell it in 100 ml bags stem cells for 1000 $ for dogs and intend to sell it for 20 000 $ for humans after they get FDA approval. That will be in 5 years. These ERC stem cells are more powerful than "regular" umbilical cord stem cells. And almost not cancerogenous. They are now doing FDA Trial in phase 2.

We better get our own laboratory!! Since these cells can get easily and unbelievably cheaplys manufactured in regular fertilization in-vitro laboratories..

I dont unterstand why should human stem therapy for humans be 19 000 $ more expensive than human stem cells intended for injection into dogs ?? I do not think this is human, but I still like him very much and I hope he will get soon FDA trial and he makes lots of $$$. Because that way there will also be more competition in this market in 5 to 10 years. And that is also good for us.

Franz

[barbara]

Most companies are in it to make a profit, however, the FDA approval process is a very expensive one adding thousands of dollars to the cost over what is required to bring a product to market for dogs.

This is one of the biggest problems facing small companies today and why Big Pharma dominates - They have the money to deal with the FDA!

[pink7]

I agree with Barbara. It is very expensive to do FDA clinical trials and small companies have to find their own funding. This type of stem cell can help recover the brain too because of the nature of the stem cells. I hope Medistem will be able to do more studies in other conditions.