Stem Cell Therapy Goes to the Dogs--and Horses/OT-interesting read-

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Stem Cell Therapy Goes to the Dogs--and Horses

While many promising stem cell therapies are still awaiting approval

for use in humans, vets are already using the technology to treat

arthritis and tendon ailments in dogs and horses.

By Reno

Newsweek

Updated: 9:28 a.m. PT Sept 13, 2007

Sept. 13, 2007 - Mike Zaremba, an operations manager for a software

company in Denver, was desperate and searching. His dog Nakota, a

three-year-old Siberian Husky, was in severe and chronic pain and

could barely walk after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery

in February failed to achieve the desired result. The dog would hide

in different parts of the house, he always had his head down, and he

couldn't walk without limping severely. " The surgery went as well as

it could have, so another surgery wasn't an option, " says

Zaremba. " But Nakota just wasn't healing. He was really suffering. I

wanted so badly to help him, but I had run out of options. "

When Zaremba's veterinarian told him about a new procedure in which

Nakota's own fat-derived stem cells could be used to expedite the

ligament's healing, Zaremba was skeptical but willing to try it.

Within a few weeks after the minimally invasive procedure, Nakota was

back to running long distances and jumping into the car with no

visible sign of pain. " He's just like his old self again, " Zaremba

says. " It's unbelievable. "

While humans are still waiting for stem cell treatments to become

available, animals like Nakota already have a paw up. Poway, Calif.-

based Vet-Stem, which touts itself as a world leader in veterinary

regenerative medicine, has been using its licensed stem cell therapy

in horses for three years and is now extending its commercial service

to include dogs, who are treated with their own stem cells to repair

tendons and ligaments. The first and only company in the United

States to offer fat-derived stem cell treatments for commercial use,

Vet-Stem has trained 65 board-certified small-animal surgeons to

treat osteoarthritis. This fall veterinarians across the United

States will be able to become credentialed users via online training

at the company's Web site http://www.vet-stem.com.

Harman, the privately held company's CEO and founder, is a

veterinarian and former bio-tech executive who says veterinarians

have used his company's procedure to treat more than 2,500 horses,

including a number of world-class racehorses, and more than 200 dogs

with arthritis and tendon and ligament injuries. " The animals return

to their prior level of performance about 75 percent of the time, "

says Harman. " There's no question that this is working. " Harman says

the only adverse side effects have been swelling at the injection

site in a small number of cases.

Harvesting stem cells has of course been a tricky and sometimes

controversial business, especially from human embryos because of the

accompanying moral debate. But with fat-derived (i.e., non-embryonic)

cells--from either humans or animals--there is no such debate. And of

course there are fewer restrictions and regulations for clinical

trials on animals than on humans. With Vet-Stem's procedure,

veterinarians collect a small sample (about two tablespoons) of the

dog's own fat with a small incision, typically from behind the

shoulder blade or from the belly. The fat is then overnighted to Vet-

Stem, where the regenerative cells are isolated, and those cells are

then overnighted back to the veterinarian in ready-to-inject

syringes. The stem cells are then injected straight into the animal's

joint or other area of concern.

While proponents of fat-derived stem cell therapy were considered

mavericks just a few years ago, Vet-Stem's results, combined with

data from a number of clinical trials worldwide, offer evidence that

this is legitimate and promising science. Dr. Darwin Prockop,

professor of biochemistry and director of the Center for Gene Therapy

at Tulane University Health Sciences Center, has been researching non-

embryonic stem cells for the past 14 years. Despite his early

skepticism about fat-derived stem cells, he says that the potential

uses for these and other non-embryonic stem cells are almost

limitless. As Prockop explains it, the body heals itself, but

sometimes it can't do enough. Stem cells boost the body's healing

capability and could potentially be used to treat almost any

disease. " These cells repair tissue; they have auto-immune and even

anti-inflammatory properties, " says Prockop, who is not affiliated

with Vet-Stem.

The unlikely idea that animal and human fat might actually contain

useful stem cells was first studied in a lab at the University of

Pittsburgh in the late 1990s. Bill Futrell, former chairman of the

plastic surgery department at that university, says his group, led by

researchers Adam Katz and Ramon Llull, was interested in studying the

potential uses of fat when the scientists had a revelation of

sorts. " When [my researchers] came to me and told me, `We can make

bone out of fat,' I was excited but naturally skeptical, " Futrell

tells NEWSWEEK. " The medical dogma for so long had been that liver

cells make only liver cells, etc., etc. We were disproving that dogma

in our labs. We looked at this again and again and again, and

concluded that this was real, and that it could be very useful. "

Research at Pittsburgh (and also at UCLA) eventually led to the

creation in 2002 of Vet-Stem by Harman, who had previously run HTI

Bio-Services, a company that researched various technologies being

developed by biotech companies and helped bring them to market. (UCLA

and Pittsburgh have now gone to court over who owns the rights to fat-

derived stem cell technology.) After Harman sold the company in 2000,

a former client told him about the work of Futrell and his colleagues

at Pittsburgh, who had apparently found regenerative stem cells in

fat. With some 60 million dogs in this country alone, Harman reasoned

that the potential for this technology's use in veterinary medicine,

if it really worked, was staggering.

Veterinary experts have been watching Vet-Stem's research with

interest. Dr. Beth Sebin, assistant director for education and

research at the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), says

the organization encourages and supports animal and human studies of

this new use of stem cells. " We don't endorse anything specifically,

but we do think this is an exciting new area of research, and it does

appear to work on animals with osteoarthritis and other joint

problems, " Sebin says. " There is peer-reviewed scientific literature

that lends credibility to what Vet-Stem is doing. They are in the

business of making money, of course, so we have to look at them

closely. But the basic research seems to back up what they are

saying. And it appears that this is all being done in veterinarian

clinics in a humane and ethical manner. That's key for us. "

As to cost, the procedure for dogs generally runs from $1,500 to

$2,500, depending on the animal's overall health. So far Vet-Stem has

performed this procedure on only a small handful of cats. " The

problem with cats is that they hide their osteoarthritic issues, "

Harman says. " It's just not as commonly diagnosed. " Though the focus

is now on canines, the company is researching treatments for cats--

especially those with kidney disease, which is a common problem

without many solutions. Harman says they plan to start trials next

year for feline kidney disease, as well as liver disease in dogs.

As groundbreaking a technology as this appears to be for pets, it

could be directly translatable to humans, insists Harman, whose

company is exclusively veterinary. " It won't help my business, but I

really believe this technology should be fast-tracked for humans, " he

says.

Tulane's Prockop, who calls Vet-Stem's work with

animals " encouraging, " advocates a more cautious approach with

people. He believes those trials should start with patients who are

terminally ill--people who have few other remaining options. " We're

still not certain why these cells sometimes work and sometimes

don't, " he says. " When placed into human tissue, they work kind of

like a drug store. But they act differently depending on what type of

tissue they are placed in, and we're still learning why that is. "

Currently, clinical research in the area of fat-derived stem cell use

in humans is underway at major institutions such as Tulane, UCLA and

the Texas Heart Institute.

Among the more promising human trials is one conducted last year in

Japan with cancer patients who have had breast reconstruction after

lumpectomies. The data from that and other studies in Europe is

expected by the end of this year. For this fat grafting procedure,

stem cells extracted from fat, usually from the abdomen, are mixed

with regular fat and then injected into the area of the breast that

needs filling out. (Ordinary fat grafts are often reabsorbed by the

body or die before they can develop a viable blood supply.)

Cytori Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine products company in San

Diego, has already initiated a clinical trial in Europe testing stem

cells derived from fat in humans for patients suffering from an

inadequate supply of blood to the heart, or chronic myocardial

ischemia, and the company is about to begin trials in heart attack

patients as well as for breast reconstruction. Researchers at Cytori

have invented a device that allows physicians to take fat from human

patients at their bedside, remove the stem cells from the fat, and

treat patients with those cells in real time. The device has already

been approved for use in Europe beginning in 2008. Cytori chief

financial officer Mark Saad says the company hopes to win approval

for the device in the United States within the next few years. In the

meantime, American pet owners will have yet another option in the

growing array of high-tech health treatments for pets.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20759068/site/newsweek/page/0/