Joy Kong, MDRegenerative Medicine Physician, Educator, and Entrepreneur

Not All Stem Cell Treatments Are Equal

12 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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0:51

Short excerpt from a YouTube video (creator: Joy Kong, MD) explaining that not all stem cell therapies are equal. The speaker contrasts autologous sources—bone marrow and fat (adipose)—noting that bone marrow contains very few mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs; ~0.01–0.1% of marrow cells) while adipose tissue yields a higher fraction (speaker estimates ~20%). The speaker also emphasizes that autologous stem cells reflect the donor's age and lifetime exposures (smoking, alcohol, toxins, infections), which can affect their quality.

Questions this video answers

Approximately 0.01% to 0.1% of bone marrow cells.

Approximately 20% (speaker's estimate).

Chapters

Could you touch on how not all stem cell therapies are equal? I delved really deep into comparing what's going on when we use autologous sources. So in this country, mostly either from a person's own bone marrow or their fat. So the bone marrow has very, very few mesenchymal stem cells. It has from 0.01 to 0.1% of all the cells in the bone marrow are MSCs. So they still are very helpful. And the fat derived stem cells do have more, probably 20% of the cells. The problem with, with these sources is, first of all, these cells are your own age. So these stem cells, even though they are stem cells, they are still your age. So everything you've done in your life, you know, whether or not you've drank a lot, you've smoked, exposed to toxicity or infections, everything that has happened, it's all affecting those cells.