Joy Kong, MD explains where stem cells come from and how they're used in therapy. The first clinical stem cell treatment was a bone marrow transplant in the 1960s. Umbilical-cord-derived cells are considered more potent and safer than stem cells taken from a patient's own fat or blood.
Where do stem cells come from? Now, if I come to you and I want to get stem cell therapy, or if I go to a clinic somewhere, Initially.
The first stem cell treatment really was the bone marrow transplant. That was from the 1960s. And we thought that was the only place where stem cells are around. And then we realized, oh, stem cells are everywhere you can get from fat. So in your fat tissue, it's not really the fat, it's the blood vessels that are supplying your fat. All along the blood vessels, there are stem cells. You can get it from the early birth child source, the umbilical cord, and you can get it from dental pulp, menstrual blood. We have stem cells everywhere. When people come to me, we're using a form of therapy that's a little bit more broad. At this point, we're giving people cells we call mesenchymal stem cell. That's majority of the type of cells I give. I give other cell types, too, from umbilical cord, which is the earlier source, which has been shown to be much more potent than the cells in your own body that we can obtain, and they're also safer.
