Stem Cell Treatments

NYSCF does not treat patients with stem cell therapies. Please visit www.clinicaltrials.gov for a complete listing of clinical trials being conducted worldwide, or consult your physician.

Stem cell research accelerates cures focusing on patients in a variety of ways:

• Clinical Trials in a Dish: Creating stem cells from patients’ cells allows researchers to conduct “clinical-trials-in-a-dish.” This means that in the future, clinicians will safely investigate how different drugs might affect a patient’s cells before testing drugs in the patient directly.
• Replacement therapies / Regenerative Medicine: Since stem cells can be manipulated into any type of cell in the body, doctors can use stem cells to grow cells to replace affected patient cells. These therapies can be “autologous,” meaning the transplants can be developed from the patients’ own cells, avoiding any issues with tissue rejection.

NYSCF focuses on research that bridges the gap between labs and clinics, translating cures from the scientific community into medicine. Today, NYSCF-supported scientists globally and in the NYSCF Research Institute enable regenerative medicine, developing new disease prevention strategies and bringing new cures to the clinic. Below are a few examples of clinical trials that have begun or are ready to begin that were conducted by NYSCF scientists or supported by NYSCF.

Macular Degeneration

Inaugural NYSCF–Robertson Stem Cell Prize recipient Pete Coffey, PhD, co-leads The London Project to Cure Blindness, which, with NYSCF support treated its first patient for ‘wet’ age-related macular degeneration with a stem cell transplant. Learn more >>

ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease)

NYSCF-supported research at Harvard University modeling ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in stem cells led to the discovery of a drug on the market for epilepsy that may be protective of motor neurons, the cells affected in ALS. Patients are now being recruited for clinical trials to test the efficacy of this treatment. Learn more >>

Mitochondrial Replacement

NYSCF scientists developed a technique to prevent the mother-to-child transmission of mitochondrial diseases, rare but often-fatal diseases. Similar to in-vitro fertilization, this technique was approved by the United Kingdom for clinical trials and NYSCF is now working to bring this therapy to patients in the United States. Learn more >>

If you are considering stem cell treatments…

A Closer Look at Stem Cells is a website aimed at helping people understand and evaluate the safety and effectiveness of currently advertised stem cell treatments around the world. If you are considering any kind of advertised stem cell treatment, we recommend you read this website to learn more about these types of therapies.