Joy Kong, MD explains why using your own stem cells for therapy is harder than it sounds. Harvesting them damages tissue and depletes your reserves. Culturing cells in the lab can cause them to differentiate or trigger immune rejection, which is why the FDA requires expanded stem cells only in approved clinical trials.
Questions this video answers
February 9, 2021
Only when conducted under a clinical study (per speaker).
Chapters
He was going to be seeing like, you know, bone marrow being extracted and having a needle injected into my penis when they did that part. And he was, he was not signed up for that.
So I was, you know, I was explaining to you a little bit about, you know, my reservation about getting stem cells from our own body. So first of all, you know, at our age, or even when you're a teenager, or Even when you're 9 years old, your stem cells is not nearly as potent as a young. The young stem cells, it's got senescence going on. It's got, you know, you've gone through the environmental changes with whatever toxins that's in the environment, you know, all kinds, just living produces this oxidative stress and that causes your cells to senesce. So your stem cells senesce with you. DNAs are changing and all that stuff. But not just that, not only the cells are not as potent, but you're also causing all these injuries and damage. So you are actually taking out your own stem cells. So you're taking your stem cells out of their dormancy, right? They are. Instead of, you know, sitting your body cocooned and preserved, all of a sudden you walk them up and you put them to work. And once they're put to work, there's a finite lifespan. So they're gonna die, you know. You know, in about a few months, three months. So which means when you take them out and put it back your body, so you woke them up and put them back in your body temporarily, maybe better. But guess what? You just reduce your own stem cell supply and also to pay attention. You know, one thing that people, you know, are not thinking about is when you do a trauma like that, when you drill into your bone, when you do a liposuction, you just created pretty big trauma to your body. And when you try to put the cells back in your body to heal your body, guess what the cells are attracted to? They're really attracted to injury and inflammation. So if you have other areas in your body you're trying to heal, but the first thing the cells know is that I'm going to heal that acute injury, that's a severe injury into the bones and. Or into the fat tissue. Let's heal that. So that's the first place they will go. So in a way, you're reducing some of the effectiveness of trying to heal whatever you're trying to, you know, to help. So there are all these limitations that I think it's not talked about enough. Cool.
Wow. That's. That's really interesting information. Yeah. And then the other thing, and I'm sure we'll talk about this when we do the official podcast, but many travel out of the country so that the FDA doesn't disallow you from culturing the stem cells and multiplying them. Right. But I think I read in your.
FDA does not allow you to do it unless you do it when you're conducting a clinical study. So you can't just do that and give it to people. It has to be under a clinical study. So that takes its own procedure. And, you know, there's a cost involved in it. So that's what's making it a little more difficult.
And you were saying in the PDF that you sent me that it's of your opinion, or maybe there's facts to support this. But when even say I go to, you know, Panama, right, and I have stem cell therapy, and they culture them and create millions and millions and millions because they multiply them. You were saying that they get sort of diluted and they're. They have less potentiality or they're weaker.
Yeah.
In number when they're, when they're cultured.
Yeah. So. So I tell people, okay, so it may sound nice, you know, instead of giving you 10 million cells, I'm giving you 100 million. Isn't that wonderful? But guess what the 10 millions do when I put in the human body, which is the best incubator there is, comparing to any incubator that you can find, that you can design as a human. Right. So we are the perfect incubator. If I put 10 million cells in me, they're going to grow to a million, a billion, way more than that, because they have about 40, 50, or even a little bit more generations to expand in your body. So it's a little silly. And to me, it's a little gimmicky to try to grow them outside of the body in an artificial environment when you can just put in the human body and let the cells do their own growth and get to whatever they need to become, rather than artificially of you not even giving them the full complement of nutrition and the full signals, and you're just putting them in an incubator. So to me, it doesn't make sense. And also when cells expand, a lot of times, if you're not giving them the right formula, they often divide into stem cells, often divide into a daughter cell and a stem cell. So a daughter cell is fully further differentiated, which means if you have 10 cells and each time they divide, they divide into daughter cell and a stem cell and. And daughter cell and stem cell. You are preserving stem cell population. But guess what? You've got all these daughter cells that are more differentiated, which means they have other surface receptors that are expressed that can potentially cause immune rejection. Because these receptors are expressed outside the body. If you put it in the body, there's a way for the cells to talk with your body, and actually there's less potential for rejection. It's very interesting. Cells do adapt to the new host. So. But when you're just expanding it outside, they don't care. They don't know what to adapt doing that. And also, when you. If you are not being careful at the edges of the plates, when you. When you put the cells in, they could easily differentiate more. You know, you've got to give the cells enough space to grow. You know, the edges are a problem. Do we have edges in the human body? We don't. So there's a reason that is safer and better to put in the body and let the cells do their magic.
Wow, cool. I can't wait to do the interview.
I have so many questions.
Oh, my God. We have work to do. But anyway, that's what we're doing here today. So Dr. Joy Kong, I just tagged her and her establishment here in an Instagram story. So for those of you watching now on Instagram, you can go back in the feed and follow her and what she does, and you can get the podcast later. Yeah, there it is right there. But we're ready to roll.
