Vet-Stem Offers New Adult Stem Cell Culturing Process

Vetmedicine.com, August 28, 2009

The U.S. adult stem cell veterinary company Vet-Stem announces a new service which offers customers an endless, indefinite supply of autologous adult stem cells.

The new service, known as "Vet-Stem Culture", is the latest innovation in a series of novel applications of Vet-Stem's proprietary stem cell technology. Often in the news for their highly successful therapies for dogs and horses, Vet-Stem is the leading veterinary stem cell company in the U.S. and the first to commercialize a highly efficient and efficacious adult stem cell therapy for veterinary use. According to Vet-Stem's highly popular procedure, veterinarians collect approximately 2 tablespoons of adipose (fat) tissue from their equine or canine patients, which is then shipped to Vet-Stem's laboratories where adult stem cells are harvested from the tissue, processed, and returned within 48 hours to the vet who injects the stem cells directly into the animal at the site of injury. The therapy continues to garner increasing attention for its consistently high success rate in regenerating diseased and damaged bones, cartilage, ligaments and muscle. Additionally, pain medications are usually reduced or eliminated altogether in animals who receive the Vet-Stem treatment, and previously prescribed surgeries often become unnecessary after the therapy is administered.

Now, Vet-Stem's new "Vet-Stem Culture" constitutes a method for re-culturing the same sample of adult stem cells indefinitely, thereby providing customers with an "everlasting" supply of stem cells, without the need to surgically collect more. Whenever a sample is sent to Vet-Stem for stem cell collection, the customer is given the option of having a small subsample stored for future culturing, should the need ever arise, for which a nominal annual fee which is charged which is less than the cost of additional surgical collection procedures.

As Vet-Stem founding CEO Dr. Robert Harman describes, "The Vet-Stem Culture service is a breakthrough in veterinary medicine, finally allowing pet owners to take preventative measures towards the future health of their pets. This option is going to eliminate the need for these injured and arthritic animals to go through multiple surgeries to extract stem cells. Even more, the results we see in animals treated with fat-derived stem cells are exceeding our expectations. Now they can continue to be treated naturally, with their own cells, to feel young over and over again."

This is not the first time that Vet-Stem has revolutionized veterinary medicine. From a July 2009 survey which Vet-Stem conducted, it was found that, of all the animals who received Vet-Stem's autologous adult stem cell therapy, "62% of dogs with arthritis discontinued or decreased use of non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)." Additionally, according to the results of the survey, "Further feedback from veterinarians and owners indicated that more than 75% of dogs with arthritis have improved quality of life after their treatment." Side effects from NSAIDS, especially gastrointestinal complications, remain a common and significant problem for animals, many of whom cannot tolerate NSAIDS precisely because of such adverse reactions. Vet-Stem's autologous (in which the donor and recipient are the same animal) adult stem cell therapy has offered an excellent therapeutic alternative for such animals.

A regular feature on this website, Vet-Stem continues to pioneer new laboratory and clinical technology in the veterinary stem cell field, all of which has applications that are directly translatable to human medicine. No doubt it is just a matter of time before such technology is applied to the long-term culturing of human adult stem cells.

Veterinarians who wish to learn how to administer the adult stem cell therapy must first become certified by Vet-Stem, which also offers accredited RACE (Registry of Approved Continuing Education) classes.