Why stem cells are bad

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Be wary of clinics offering treatments with stem cells originating from a part of your body unrelated to your disease or condition. Because stem cells that are specific to certain tissues cannot make cells found in other tissues without careful manipulation in the lab, it is very unlikely that the same stem cell treatment will work for diseases affecting different tissues and organs within the body.

Scientists have learned to make certain specialized cell types through a multi-step processes using pluripotent stem cells, that is embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem iPS cells. These cells have the potential to form all the different cell types in the body and offer an exciting opportunity to develop new treatment strategies.

Embryonic stem cells and iPS cells, however, are not good candidates to be used directly as treatments, as they require careful instruction to become the specific cells needed to regenerate diseased or damaged tissue. If not properly directed, these stem cells may overgrow and cause tumors when injected into the patient.

View clinics that offer the same cell treatment for a wide variety of conditions or diseases with extreme caution. Be wary of claims that stem cells will somehow just know where to go and what to do to treat a specific condition. The more you know about the causes and effects of your disease, the better armed you are to identify your best treatment options. If you have a certain type of blood cancer, for example, transplantation with blood-forming stem cells makes sense, as the treatment requires those specific cells to do exactly what they are designed to do.

Without significant and careful manipulation in the lab, tissue-specific stem cells do not generate cell types found outside of their home tissues. Your best protection against clinics selling unproven stem cell treatments is an understanding of the science behind your disease, injury or condition. In theory, your immune system would not attack your own cells if they were used in a transplant. However, the processes by which the cells were acquired, grown and then reintroduced into the body would carry risks.

Here are just a few known risks of autologous stem cell treatments:. Every medical procedure carries risk; be wary of clinics that gloss over or minimize the risks associated with their treatments. But unproven stem cell therapies can be particularly unsafe. For instance, attendees at a FDA public workshop discussed several cases of severe adverse events. One patient became blind due to an injection of stem cells into the eye. Another patient received a spinal cord injection that caused the growth of a spinal tumor.

Note: Even if stem cells are your own cells, there are still safety risks such as those noted above. In addition, if cells are manipulated after removal, there is a risk of contamination of the cells. When stem cell products are used in unapproved ways—or when they are processed in ways that are more than minimally manipulated, which relates to the nature and degree of processing—the FDA may take and has already taken a variety of administrative and judicial actions, including criminal enforcement, depending on the violations involved.

In August , the FDA announced increased enforcement of regulations and oversight of stem cell clinics. And in March , to further clarify the benefits and risks of stem cell therapy, the FDA published a perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Know that the FDA plays a role in stem cell treatment oversight. You may be told that because these are your cells, the FDA does not need to review or approve the treatment.

These and other actions are needed to stem the tide of clinics offering unproved therapies and the people who manage and operate them. They list pay-to-participate clinical trials on the site, often without developing, registering or administering a real clinical trial. The site includes how and where to report adverse events and false marketing claims by stem cell clinics. I encourage you to visit and learn about what is known and unknown about stem cells and their potential for biomedicine.

The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Deepak Srivastava, M. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science.