15 Apr Bone Marrow vs. Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Therapy

Hi, it’s Dr. David Greene, Founder and CEO of R3 Stem Cell, the nation’s leader in Regenerative Medicine Therapies.

Today’s topic is the five main differences between bone marrow and umbilical stem cell therapy. Now, umbilical, I’m going to refer to more as perinatal, and the reason is that it’s not just the umbilical cord in those biologics at our centers, you have umbilical cord, you have some of the Wharton’s jelly around the umbilical cord or some of the placenta, amniotic fluid. So really is a plethora of regenerative cells that come from those components, better all obtained ethically from consenting donors after a scheduled C-section. Normally that material is discarded, the baby’s fine, the mother’s fine and, but in this case it doesn’t get discarded, alright.

So the first major difference between bone marrow and perinatal cell therapy is that the bone marrow comes from you, you’re the donor of your own bone marrow, alright, so that’s what’s called Autologist, and the umbilicals what’s called Allogeneic, ’cause it comes from a donor, not from you.

The second major difference is really an offshoot of number one, how the material is obtained, so, I just explained that one customer donor and one comes from you, but, when it comes from you, it’s not just a blood draw, alright, it actually has to come from your bone marrow, the major source of which is in the pelvis, okay, so when it’s obtained the needle that you use is about the size of a pen, alright, and the provider will numb up a little area over your pelvis, make a little incision, and then hammer in that pin to get the bone marrow aspirated out, and usually they will hammer it in three different directions to get more bone marrow to try and get more cells. So that is something to think about and one of the major differences is that it can very painful, about 50% of patients end up with over 6 months of chronic pain from having had the aspiration. Whereas with the donated material, there is no incision or anything made on you because it comes from a donor. So as a major difference is, one can be very painful, the other is not painful at all because it comes from a donor.

Now the third major difference between bone marrow and perinatal cell therapy is actually the rejection possibility. Now, it’s actually not a difference anymore, because obviously the bone marrow is going to be yours that gets used, so it’s going to be processed and then put back in you, okay. The umbilical and placenta material comes from a donor, so we get asked a lot, “am I going to possibly reject that?”, “do I need to have cross matching, or should I have it from a donation from a relative?”, and the answer is no. At our labs, any DNA factors are removed during processing, so, close to 11,000 procedures now, we’ve never had a rejection reaction because all the DNA factors are gone, there’s actually nothing that you received from the donor material that could cause a rejection, and without those DNA factors, so it just doesn’t happen. So anybody who tries to tell you that, that is a differentiating factor, it’s not at all.

So the fourth major difference is the numbers of stem cells that you get in a bone marrow, donation from yourself, or as supposed to the perinatal cell therapy from a donor. The difference is actually tremendous, so let’s look at it. At the age of 50, you have close to 80% less stem cells in your bone marrow than you did compared to when you were born. I mean think about that for a second, when you are born 1 in 10,000 cells in your bone marrow is a stem cell, and at the age of 50, that’s dropped down to less than 1 in 500,000. So it’s a humongous drop-off, and what it means is that after the age of 50, there’s really no reason anybody should have a bone marrow procedure for stem cell therapy.

Now the fifth major difference between bone marrow versus the perinatal cell therapy is the activity of the biologic cells. Now, research at a Case Western Reserve in Cleveland has shown that as we age our stem cells get lazy, what does that mean? Well, they just don’t want to do their job well, they become couch potatoes. The researchers at Case Western Reserve didn’t know why our stem cells got lazy, they just hypothesized, maybe because of all the toxins we ingest over our lifetime, maybe it’s from the medications we ingest, alcohol, smoking, radio waves. Who knows exactly, but we do know that they are not nearly as active as the stem cells and other regenerative cells that come from the perinatal donor tissue that is processed, and if it’s processed properly, we’ll have a lot of live cells in it, and ours are at our centers.

So, the bottom line is if you are over the age of 50, and contemplating a stem cell therapy, when you look at the differences between bone marrow from yourself versus the perinatal tissue from a donor, there is no comparison, bone marrow loses every time. And that is something to seriously think about when you are trying to make a decision as to whether you do or don’t want to undergo stem cell therapy, and when you do, what kind do you want to have.

Alright, visit us online today at R3stemcell.com, a lot of educational information, tons of videos if you click on our YouTube channel link. And then call us at (844) GET-STEM. We’d be happy to get you in for a free consultation at a center close to you to see if you are a candidate for stem cell therapy. Thank you.