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Recently MS patient Jan Wilks began walking days after treatment with umbilical cord stem cells after years in a wheelchair. Coverage of her case in the press sparked a huge demand for more information on this new cutting edge treatment.

Jan Wilks is only one of stem cell therapy's success stories.

Multiple Sclerosis ' a Cure?

Stem cell therapy is not defined as a cure for MS but as a treatment for this crippling disorder. The medical definition of a cure is a treatment which generates a remission in symptoms and normal diagnostic studies for five years or over. Data has not been monitored long enough to use the word cure. The term treatment is much more medically sound.

A stem cell is a primitive cell capable of producing many types of specialized cells. A stem cell communicates with the body to determine and travel to sites of need, to divide in a controlled manner to create a copy of itself and a copy of another more specialized cell required by the body and to assist the body to heal and regenerate its existing cells.

For Multiple Sclerosis stem cells work in three ways

1) By forming new neurons to replace the dead ones.

2) By replacing the dysfunctional and destroyed oligodendrocyes (myelin-producing cells.)

3) By coordinating the repair process via signaling cues to the existing cells. Cord blood stem cells also have the capacity to modulate the immune system and have consistently normalized markers of over-active immune systems in several in-house studies.

How Are The Stem Cells Produced?

Using specialized protocols the red and white blood cells are removed from the umbilical cords. This dispenses with the need for blood or tissue matches, and removing any associated risks. The purified stem cells are then expanded or 'grown' in controlled laboratory culture to generate the high numbers needed for therapeutic application. During this process certain rare and very powerful subsets of stem cells (comprising 10% of the stem cells in a normal cord) are expanded to comprise over 70% of the total stem cell population per vial. These purified and potentiated cord blood stem cells are frozen using a specialized media. The components of the freeze media are FDA- (US Food & Drugs Administration) approved for human injection and significantly enhance viability: the number of thriving, healthy cells after defrosting. Post thaw viability using this specialized freeze media and a proprietary freeze method is more than 97%.

A Question of Ethics?

Stem cells are derived from umbilical cords with no right to life issues. Cords are obtained via informed consent donations from screened mothers of full term births, fully tested for infectious diseases using American Association of Blood Bank Standards.

Success Rates

The stem cells have been used to treat multiple sclerosis over 100 times with an average significant clinical benefit ratio of over 80%. The 80% success rate figure is based on in-house historical data. Preliminary analysis of updated data ' including the data using the new site-specific injection ' reflects more than 90% success rate. Different individuals have different responses. An analysis shows that 90% of cases who did not perform or performed marginally at first with no long- term benefit were taking toxic drugs such as beta-interferon (Avonex, Betaseron) chemotherapy (Novantrone) or antibiotics. It can be deduced that the toxicity or function of certain drugs may challenge or kill the stem cells or create other areas of need that would dilute the neurological progress. Beta-interferon is especially toxic to the liver consequently stem cells may prioritize that area for regeneration instead of the neurological system. Over 90% of all cases which performed with the highest rating had worked with their prescribing physicians to wean off the above drugs before starting cell treatment or had never taken them.

Good Candidates

Every single person is different and experiences a different manifestation of MS on a different schedule. Consequently every single person experiences his or her own route to healing. As with any medical treatment, it is extremely difficult to predict outcome. There are some patients who respond better than others, these include patients who:

Have not taken toxic drugs, have minimal or reduced heavy metal toxicity, don't smoke, drink, take drugs or artificial sweeteners, eat a healthy diet with unadulterated nutrition for the cells including raw fruits, vegetables, and fat sources, do some form of physical activity/therapy and have highly positive yet realistic therapy goals.

The Risks

In more than 300 treatments no negative side effects have been reported; nor are there any medically or scientifically anticipated risks outside that of a routine outpatient injection. This is primarily due to the fact that all white blood cells have been removed from samples using a proprietary purification protocol.