Dr. Joy Kong explains where stem cells come from: bone marrow, umbilical cord blood, cord tissue, and amniotic membrane. She describes why she uses multiple sources from one donor, how tissue is collected from cesarean births, mechanically separated in a lab, frozen at minus 79.5 degrees Celsius, then thawed and activated with red light before infusion.
Questions this video answers
0.1% to 0.01% of all bone marrow cells are MSCs.
About one degree Celsius per minute.
Approximately −79.5 degrees (Celsius) on dry ice.
They only accept unvaccinated donors (mothers not vaccinated against COVID-19).
Activation with red light prior to placing cells in the IV bag.
Chapters
In these stem cells, they're not being expanded at all. Is that correct? You're just literally collecting.
Yeah. So these are young, healthy mothers doing cesarean section. Right. So everything is going through the sterile field. And once the cord is cut and cord and the placenta is put in a saline bag on ice and overnight shipped to the lab, the lab will process. The stem cell space. The bone marrow and thyroid stem cells came first. Especially bone marrow has been around for a very long time. So umbilical cord came later. And the first group was umbilical cord blood. So basically, the cord, right. Contain arteries and veins, squeeze the blood out of it. And the umbilical cord blood composition is very similar to the bone marrow composition. So it's full of primitive immune cells, some hematopoietic progenitor cells, which can go ahead and form all the bloodlines and have a very small amount of mesenchymal stem cells, which is the most famous right now, what everybody's going after. And. But very tiny amount, same as the bone marrow. The bone marrow has 0.1 to 0.01% of all the cells are mesenchymal stem cells. That's the core blood has very, very tiny amount, but very tiny. And the cord blood cells will be very similar to what's inside the baby. Right. They're kind of circulating back and forth and back and forth. The core blood also contains some endothelial progenitor cells, and it has its own property. And then later on, people realize, oh, in the umbilical cord tissue within the tissue itself. So all the things that's wrapping around the cord and full of mesenchymal stem cells, and these mesenchymal stem cells are actually. Right. The bulk of this jelly, these stem cells actually are more primitive than the core blood MSC. So the MSCs from the cord, from the Wharton's jelly, is more primitive because they were trapped while the baby was forming with the cord was forming, is actually more primitive. So. So it's a little different from the MSCs in the cord blood. So it has different orientation of how they want to differentiate, you know, what kind of cells they can become. So that's a core tissue, and then you've got amniotic membrane. All the membrane that's wrapping around the cord, that also can be very helpful. And there are some labs only produce products out of the amniotic membrane, and that can have MSCs also. But they also have a different, you know, potential to. To develop into different tissue cells. So what I did was that I put all three together from the same donor, because I've seen benefits from each source on their own, and I know they're all a little different. So why don't you put all the therapeutic components together, knowing that they have slightly different orientation? So that's kind of what I'm doing. Why is so different from what everybody. Everybody else is doing? Okay.
So basically it's a combination of all. And when these stem cells. Okay, so they're being combined elsewhere, they're not being expanded at all. Is that correct? You're just literally collecting them.
Yeah. So once the tissue. And by the way, we only accept unvaccinated donors, so we don't accept mothers who have been vaccinated by Covid. It's just introducing too many unknown factors. So we can go down a rabbit hole with that one. But basically, we're avoiding that particular problem. So these are young, healthy mothers doing cesarean sections. Right. So everything is going through the sterile field. And once the cord is cut and cord. And the placenta is put in a saline bag, normal saline bag, on ice, and overnight shipped to the lab. The lab will process it, and they will use mechanical methods to carefully separate the cells out. And once. Once the cells are freed, that's when they will start to lower the temperature very methodically, about one degree per minute. So gradually. Gradually, these cells will free.
Free animation.
Right. So. So they just. They stop their metabolic activity so they can be kept in that state for. For decades. So what we do is that we thaw them out by the time it's ready to use, and then. So there's no expansion process.
The stem cells have been harvested. And is that clinic nearby, or does it get shipped to you?
What.
What. How does it. How does the process come from that clinic to you? Like, is it staying in the cry.
From a clinic? It's from a tissue bank.
Sorry.
Yeah. Ship everything to me on dry ice. Okay. The temperature at minus, you know, 79.5 degrees. And that's when. Yeah, the cells kept. It's kept very well. So it's overnight shipped to us, and then we can give it to patients. Yeah. Continue to be frozen, and it's. And we use a water bath. You know, it's only after we've gotten the IV access established, we're ready to get the cells. So I will thaw them out very rapidly because you're avoiding the stage where the crystals can form, so you want rapid thawing. And then once we get it, I activate it with red light to give them more energy to help their Viability. And then we put in the IV bag and give it to you. Right.
Okay.
Wow.
Sounds like. Sounds like you're a chef. We do the same thing with food. We do the same thing with food. We don't, we don't cry or freeze. But. But, you know, it's interesting how you.
Water day restaurateur and he was saying, yeah, it's very similar to how we deal with, with meat because if you do it too rapidly, then it dries out and. Right. You lose the moisture and then you get, you know, dry and, you know, not very good. Good meat.
Exactly right. That's exactly right. So that's what I was referring to. So, yeah, it's the same. A similar process. I mean, obviously it'. But yeah, okay. I would really like to see whatever study I could in terms of the efficacy. I know you talked about it a little bit about. I'm not sure how many stem cells you'd recommend for me, but I know that in one of your podcasts you were talking about, you know, you know, 100 million stem cells is only worth. Is only worth 10. 10 million of mine, for example. I think something similar to that.
Yeah, that's the study I saw at the, the conference, the stem cell conference where, you know, a research lab did the study looking at what happens when you expand the cells and look at how active they are, how therapeutic they are. And so what we found out is that when you start to expand the cells at 10 times the number of cells, as, you know, as unexpanded native cells, you actually lose potency. So if you're giving, you're giving 10 times more and you have less effect. That was what was quite a moment for me, realizing that more is not better.
