Stem Cell Therapy Centers for MD, Other Diseases Seek to Educate Patients Through Free Public Seminars

Margarida Azevedo, MSc avatar

by Margarida Azevedo, MSc |

Dr. Thomas Gionis

The use of stem cell therapy for a wide range of diseases continues to gain momentum across the United States, with more and more patients and their families seeking information about the benefits and potential risks of the treatment. In answer to this, clinics such as the Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center are offering a series of free public seminars with a mission to promote knowledge on the use of adult autologous stem cells for the treatment of degenerative and inflammatory diseases, including muscular dystrophy. The series, which Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center is using to promote the opening of a new location in The Villages in Florida, will be hosted by the center’s surgeon-in-chief Thomas A. Gionis, and its medical director and surgeon, Nia Smyrniotis.

Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center has been working in collaboration with the Irvine Stem Cell Treatment Center and the Manhattan Regenerative Medicine Medical Group in order to approve investigational protocols for therapies based on adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) to increase the quality of life of adults suffering from chronic, degenerative and inflammatory conditions.

Adipose-derived stem cells are extracted from the patients’ fat tissue. ADSCs are cells with natural healing proprieties that assist in damaged tissue through chemical signaling to repair injured cells. The Center provides regenerative therapy for patients who suffer from muscular dystrophy, among other chronic conditions, using the patients’ own fat, as opposed to embryonic stem cells or those extracted from bone marrow.

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Dr. Nia Smyrniotis

In addition to muscular dystrophy, therapy using Adult Autologous Stem Cells is currently being studied for the treatment of emphysema, COPD, asthma, heart failure, heart attack, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, traumatic brain injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, inflammatory myopathies, and degenerative orthopedic joint conditions of the knee, shoulder, hip and spine.

In spite of the new and sometimes controversial nature of stem therapy, the continued unmet needs of many of the above-mentioned diseases are encouraging patients and their families looking for viable treatments to seek out more information from clinics such as Miami Stem Cell Treatment Center.

The seminars will take place next week, Tuesday, February 17, at 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm and 5:00 pm at the La Hacienda Regional Recreation Center, as well as on March 3 at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites, The Villages. On both days, the surgeons will be present during Social Hour at 7:00 pm, at the City Fire American Oven & Lounge at Brownwood.

A recent study by scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine in mice modeling Duchenne muscular dystrophy, revealed that connective-tissue genes associated with symptoms such as fibrosis and muscle weakness are expressed in muscle stem cells of afflicted subjects. The researchers have found that the malfunction may affect the stem cells surrounding muscle fibers, and that during the disease’s course, the stem cells’ ability to build new muscle is diminished and instead expresses genes that drive excessive connective tissue formation or scarring.