Empowered Patient Podcast Stem Cell Therapy Targeting Alzheimer’s and Other Brain Disorders with Dr. Chris Duma Regeneration Biomedical
Dr. Chris Duma, President and Founder of Regeneration Biomedical, is developing stem cell therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and multiple sclerosis. Their approach involves directly injecting the patient's stem cells into the brain ventricles to stimulate the brain's innate stem cells to repair and replace damaged neurons. Current clinical trials are showing promising results and, notably, minimal side effects compared to other Alzheimer's drugs.
Chris explains, "So our focus is to treat the full disease and make a difference in the disease's progression. The way the disease presents itself and the way that the disease is actually cured. The focus until now has been to target particular areas of abnormality in patients’ brains. Those with Alzheimer's disease, as we know, have plaques in the brain, and they have tangles in the brain. Alzheimer's disease was discovered or invented by a pathologist in the early 1900s. When they sliced the brain of an Alzheimer's patient, they found these abnormal collections of protein, and they called them plaques and tangles. The target of most research and most treatments have been monoclonal antibodies to these plaques and tangles. And we at Regeneration Biomedical do not necessarily feel that that is the cause of the problem. We think that they're the end product of cell death. So, what you need to do is fix the problem from the origin, and there might be nothing other than a stem cell that could do that. So that is our trajectory, and that's where we are today."
"We had rogue stem cell clinics out there that were giving stem cells for every possible disease, and patients were lured to places like Mexico, Germany, and China to get very expensive stem cell treatments that were probably completely worthless. The difference between them and us is that we're an FDA-cleared trial. We have gone to the FDA to do this and believe me, you are right, the FDA opening up their arms to stem cells is absolutely brand new. We're actually one of the newest kids on the block who can do this. What we're doing with our stem cells, which is directly injecting them into the brain, which we can discuss later, is the first in the world. We're at that threshold now that the FDA is probably looking more and more into this and more and more into personalized medicine. And that's what this falls into the category of as well."
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