June 11, 2018

Doctors treating patients using stem cell-based products

“Treating injury without pain relievers like opioids is something that’s already happening, and it’s happening in Arizona.

Doctors using a local stem cell based product are helping patients recover faster, sometimes without surgery. Injuries and pain that took months for recovery now take only weeks or days.

“Some people call it the miracle of our generation, I believe it is,” said Dr. Richard Jacoby, a foot and ankle specialist at the Extremity Health Centers in Scottsdale. “What we have here today is a young girl who has chronic and recurring Plantar Fasciitis.”

Surgery, drugs and non-invasive therapies have been part of Jacoby’s toolbox for years. Now, he has something new. Dr. Jacoby is giving his patient an injection of regenerative fluid that is derived from human stem cells.

“Technically this is not a stem cell injections it recruits like a magnet for your own stem cells. “This particular product is a Axolotl Biologix product,” said Dr. Jacoby. “The axolotl is a Mexican Salamander. It’s a bit of a mascot for us,” said Rob S. Kellar, Ph.D., the Chief Science Officer Axolotl Biologix. They make stem cell derived regenerative fluids in a facility in North Phoenix. It’s the the same product Dr. Jacoby and many other doctors around the country are using to treat their patients.

The subject of stem cells has always been controversial. Political outrage followed the early use of embryonic stem cells, or stem cells from an unborn baby. “If you are going to be harvesting embryonic stem cells or embryonic tissue, usually that’s going to compromise of the developing embryo,” said Kellar.

That is not, however, what Axolotl Biologix does. Instead, it takes donated placental tissue, the afterbirth that most hospitals throw away. “In our process, the baby and the mother are celebrating, and the tissue we receive is actually placenta,” said Kellar. Inside a lab, workers process amniotic stem cells from donated placental tissue after C-Sections only, because it’s a sterile procedure. It has FDA approval.

“That womb environment, or the in-utero environment, is one of the most regenerative environments we know,” said Kellar.