Treatment Center FAQs

What are cells?

Cells  are the fundamental building blocks of the human body. These tiny structures make up the skin, muscles, bones and all of the internal organs. They are the key elements to how our bodies function. Cells serve both a structural and a functional role in the body, performing a wide range of actions to sustain the body's tissues and organs.

There are many different specialized cell types in the adult body. All of these cells perform very specific functions for the tissue or organ they compose. In the case of heart muscle, specialized cells "beat" rhythmically through the conduction of electrical signals, while the cells of the pancreas produce insulin to help the body convert food to energy. These mature cells have been differentiated, or dedicated, to performing their special tasks. Once a cell has become specialized, it cannot be changed into a different type of cell.

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How does Cell Therapy work?

Cell therapy can be considered as a group of new techniques, or technologies, that work by replacing diseased or dysfunctional cells with healthy, functioning ones. Our therapeutic treatment harvests the beneficial characteristics of adult stem cells.

These new techniques are being applied to a wide range of human diseases, including many types of cancer, neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease, spinal cord injuries, and heart disease. Even though cells are indispensable in performing many important functions for the body, they can also exist outside the body. They can live and divide into "cultures," special solutions in test tubes or Petrie dishes. This ability to isolate certain cell types from other cells under controlled conditions has allowed scientists to study them independently of the organ or system they are normally a part of.

Through the isolation and targeted manipulation of cells, scientists are researching ways to identify young, regenerating ones that can be used to replace damaged or dead ones in diseased organs. This therapy is similar to the process of organ transplant, but in this case, it's the transplantation of cells rather than organs.

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What are Stem Cells?

Stem cells, also known as progenitor cells, are primitive cells that give rise to other types of cells. There are several kinds of stem cells. Totipotent cells  are considered the "master" cells of the body because they contain all the genetic information needed to create all the cells of the body plus the placenta, which nourishes the human embryo.

Human cells have this capacity only during the first few divisions of a fertilized egg. After three to four divisions of totipotent cells, there follows a series of stages in which the cells become increasingly specialized. The next stage of division results in pluripotent cells, which are highly versatile and can give rise to any cell types except the cells of the placenta.

At the next stage, cells become multipotent, this mean that they can give rise to several other cell types, but those types are limited in number. An example of multipotent cells is hematopoietic cells-blood stem cells that can develop into several types of blood cells, but cannot develop into brain cells. At the end of the long chain of cell divisions that make up the embryo are "terminally differentiated" cells; cells that are considered to be permanently committed to a specific function.

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What is an Embryonic Stem Cell?

An embryonic stem cell originates from a group of cells called the inner cell mass, which is part of the early (four to five day-old) embryo called the blastocyst. Once removed from the blastocyst, the cells of the inner cell mass can be cultured into embryonic stem cells.

These embryonic stem cells are not themselves embryos. In fact, evidence is suggesting that these cells do not behave in the laboratory as they would in the developing embryo. The conditions in which these cells develop in culture are likely to differ from those in the developing embryo.

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What is an Adult Stem Cell?

An adult stem cell is an unspecialized (undifferentiated) cell that occurs in a specialized (differentiated) tissue, renews itself, and becomes specialized to yield all of the specialized cell types of the tissue from which it originated.

The most common place to obtain these cells is from the bone marrow. There are many types of stem cells that we can find in the bone marrow, including hematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells  and angiogenic stem cells. It is known that hematopoietic stem cells form blood; mesenchymal stem cells form bone, cartilage and muscle and angiogenic stem cells form the vascular system (arteries and veins).

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What are the similarities and differences between Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells?

Adult and embryonic stem cells differ in the number and type of differentiated cell types they can become. Embryonic stem cells can become all cell types of the body because they are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are generally limited to differentiating into different cell types of their tissue of origin. However, some evidence suggests that adult stem cell plasticity may exist, increasing the number of cell types a given adult stem cell can become.

A potential advantage of using adult stem cells is that the patient's own cells could be expanded in culture and then reintroduced into the patient. The use of the patient's own adult stem cells would mean that there will not be any risk of immunology rejection. This represents a significant advantage as immune rejection is a difficult problem that can only be circumvented with immunosuppressive drugs. Embryonic stem cells from a donor introduced into a patient could cause transplant rejection.

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How are Cell Therapies being used today?

Bone marrow transplants are an example of cell therapy in which the stem cells in a donor's marrow are used to replace the blood cells of the victims of leukemia and other cancers. Cell therapy is also being used in experiments to graft new skin cells to treat serious burn victims, and to grow new corneas for the sight-impaired. Recently, pancreatic cells derived from stem cells were implanted into the body of a diabetic and began to produce insulin.

In all of these applications, the goal is for the healthy cells to become integrated into the body and begin to function like the patient's own cells. The results of these experiments have far exceeded expectations. Even though cell therapy is a new science, early results have caused great optimism to the medical and health care industries.

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How do you turn the stem cells into pancreatic Beta cells?

The stem cells inside your organ do not turn into Beta cells; they become insulin-producing cells and start to produce insulin.

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Do you use a DNA vector?

No, we do not manipulate cell DNA.

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What are the risks of surgery?

Medical procedures include some risks and side-effects, including risks relating to the anesthetic, infections, complications when the wound is healing, and temporary post-surgical pain. Bleeding can occur on rare occasions. The Zoa Cell clinic/hospital minimizes surgical risks by using state-of-the-art medical equipment and ensuring strict adherence to hygiene guidelines.

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Can stem cells regenerate and cause hypoglycemia?

No, when the stem cells start their production they will respond to the physiological needs of your body. During the treatment process however, if the patient does not report the required lab tests and his/her medication is not being controlled and monitored, any extra insulin intake can result in episodes of hypoglycemia.

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How do you avoid Tumors and Insulinoma?

The Adults Stem cells are undifferentiated mature cells and they are not capable of transforming into an immature cell that would start growing indefinitely, creating a tumor.

Adult cells seem to have a pre-programmed limit to the number of times that they can divide. Interestingly, the limit seems to be based, in part, on the cell's ability to maintain the integrity of its DNA. An enzyme called telomerase is responsible for adding the specific DNA sequence to the end of the DNA strands, which are found at the ends of chromosomes. In adults, most of our cells don't utilize telomerase so they eventually die. In cancer cells, telomerase is often active and allows the cells to continue to divide indefinitely.

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What do you do to cells to make them pancreas cells?

When the cells are delivered to the pancreas or other organs they go through several steps until they reach their function. One of the most important steps is called homing. Homing is when the stem cells find their niche. When this takes place chemical molecules, called cytokines, introduce the cell to the specific role it will have so it can begin development.

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What outcome data of progress or complications do you have?

The data from our patients' progress has been published in several meetings and conferences around the world. You can reach the published abstracts on this web site. The complications presented by patients were the same as previously described in the risks of surgery.

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