What is Stem Cell Therapy?

A stem cell therapy is a treatment that is used to replace or repair tissues in people whose tissues have been damaged or destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation. Stem cell transplant is a specific type of stem cell therapy, which focuses on replacing a bone marrow to reproduce blood cells.

Types of Stem Cell Therapies:

Autologous Therapies - Uses the patient’s own stem cells

• Pros: Little to no risk of immune rejection from stem cells

• Cons: Some of the stem cells can become cancer cells, which could lead to cancer relapse

Allogeneic Therapies - Uses stem cells from a donor, typically a family member, matched donor, or umbilical cord blood

• Pros: Donor immune cells can remove any remaining cancer through a graft-vs-cancer effect

• Cons: Can weaken the immune system through immune rejection, which attacks the patient’s tissues

Benefits of Stem Cell Therapies:

• They can provide damaged bone marrow by cancer treatments with healthy stem cells

• They are known to be effective against blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma

• They tend to be less riskier than other treatments like surgery 

Disadvantages of Stem Cell Therapies:

• They can cause short or long term side effects, especially in allogeneic therapies since the body is receiving foreign materials

• They could lead to complications like infertility, organ damage, and could cause cancer relapse

• Ethical concerns may rise like the use of embryonic stem cells

Cost of Stem Cell Therapies:

• They are known to be expensive, costing around $200,000 to $500,000 for allogeneic therapies

• Testing and donor matching cost around $3,500 to $50,000, based on your donor type

• Insurance usually never covers stem cell therapies as they are considered experimental. Even if insurance covers some of the cost, it could still bring financial burdens to families

Stem cell therapies are one of the most innovative treatments to exist in modern medicine, however they come with major risks and costs. They are still considered experimental since most of them are not approved due to lack of safety and effectiveness.

Stem-Cell Therapies

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