Stem Cell Therapy: Tooth Buds and Cord Blood are Ethical Alternatives to Embryonic Stem Cells

Aug. 15, 2010 - PRLog -- "Cord blood wakes up drowning victim's brain" is a headline that thrills Wayne Franco MD. Dr Wayne Franco wants to drastically improve the lives of children and adults with brain damage, stroke, brain trauma and cerebral palsy.   Stem cells from developing tooth buds will benefit patients whose cord blood was not saved.  This is an important "second chance" according to Dr Franco.

Dr. Franco and New Heart Foundation's licensee, Cord Blood Registry, recently posted encouraging results using a patient's cord blood stem cells to treat her after a drowning accident left her with moderate to severe brain damage.

Two year old Sparrow Morris drowned in her family's pool and as a result lost oxygen for approximately 45 minutes and suffered two cardiac arrests. She was not expected to live. She did survive the drowning, but was but left with significant brain damage

She was a beautiful two year old who only functioned at the level of a 3 month old infant.

Fortunately, her parents had stored her cord blood stem cells with Cord Blood Registry. A year after her accident her parents were called by Cord Blood Registry and were told about an experimental treatment they were involved in at Duke University. Little Sparrow went to Duke University where she was treated with an infusion of her own cord blood stem cells. Within a day, her parents reported a dramatic improvement and she continues to improve. Her parents report she has not reached a plateau in her recovery since the stem cell treatment.

New Heart Foundation and Cord Blood Registry together have patent pending protocols to treat stroke, cerebral palsy, brain trauma, and low oxygen injury to the brain. Cord blood registry has successfully treated cerebral palsy and is actively recruiting patients for stroke, brain trauma, and low oxygen injury to the brain.

Unfortunately, many patients suffer from these conditions. In addition, there is little in the way of available treatments for these conditions. United States statistics for these conditions include: Stroke: 6 million patients, Brain Trauma: 1.7 million, and Cerebral Palsy: 1million.

Dr Franco has been desperate to offer the benefits of cord blood stem cells to all the patients with brain damage and serious neurologic deficit diseases but is stymied because most parents have not banked their children's cord blood.

Stem cells from lost baby teeth and wisdom teeth are being banked but are generally of lower quality. Dr Franco is now working with a Gurnee dentist, Dr Ira L Shapira who is president of Dato-Tech and has method and device patents on the collection of stem cells from minimally invasive prophylactic removal of wisdom tooth buds before calcification.

Dr Shapira's vision was to reduce the morbidity of wisdom tooth removal while simultaneously collecting and storing stem cells from the developing tooth bud. These may actually be more powerful for treating neurologic injuries because they develop from the neural crest. Dr Shapira's concept was published in a letter to the editor in the July 2010 JADA, Journal of the American Dental Association on morbidity associated with third molar removal.

Dr Wayne Franco considered these cells an answer to a prayer. He would now be able to help an even greater number of patients. Dr Shapira believed the best time to collect cells was between 8-10 years old when it could be done in a minimally invasive procedure in just a few minutes.

Dr Franco has taken this one step further. Utilizing Dr Shapira's easy technology stem cells can be collected at almost any time until 10 years old from other developing teeth with little or no discomfort. This would cause a loss of a tooth but this is a small price if brain trauma, cerebral Palsy or other conditions can be alleviated or drastically improved.

Dr Franco calls this "The Second Chance" and hopes by combining his work with Dr Shapira's a new paradigm can be created.

The doctors are currently looking for a manufacturer for the device that collects and stores the stem cells for processing and a storage facility. Dr Franco has already made contact with Cord Blood Registry and several other storage facilities. Patients with serious problems could have the cells processed and directly infused. Dr Franco would like to see a single storage company for all stem cell collections from tooth buds. If there is a paradigm change this could literally be millions of samples per year.

There are two collection sites that are ideal in most patients and one could be used for personal storage while a second could conceivably be used for public banking, research or as a back-up for personal use possibly at a second storage site.

The collection of stem cells from developing tooth buds has many advantages in ease of collection and scheduling compared to Cord Blood. In Japan Hepatocytes, or liver cells have been grown from stem cells from tooth buds. The stem cells from the tooth bud contain epithelial stem cells, nerve stems, blood vessel stem cells and the typical mesenchymal stem cells found in extracted teeth.

Contact Wayne Franco MD, CEO, New Heart Foundation
8603056041
Wayne-franco-md@sbcglobal.net
http://sleepandhealth.com

Dr Shapira began looking at stem cell therapy in the 1990's when cancer affected his family.    
He considered stem cells from patients jaws and developing teeth as an ethical alternative for patients who objected to embryonic stem cell use.  Dr Shapira believes embryonic stem cell research is essential but wanted to assure that patients with religeous objections would still benefit from stem cell therapies. When umbilical cord blood was investigated as an alternative to embryonic stem cells Dr Shapira temporarily put aside his work.  He later realized that due to their orgin from the neural crest stem cells from teeth had advantages over cord blood stem cells.  He also decided that the minimal invasive early removal of developing third molar (wisdom teeth) tooth buds were better than the current method waiting until teeth developed and then cutting them out of the jaw.  Minimally invasive early removal would eliminate most of the  morbidity and risk with the bonus of collecting stem cells at an earlier stage in development.

Dr Shapira secured several URL's for future webites promoting stem cells from teeth as the "ethical alternative" for patients.  He has held these domain names for many years knowing that it would only be a matter of time until scientists like Dr Franco and those at Duke would find uses for these cells.

The following url's were meant to appeal to Catholics, Baptists, Orthodox Jews and other groups who object to embryonic stem cells.  Dr Shapira expects these groups to embrace stem cell therapy from cord blood and developing tooth buds.

www.ETHICALALTERNATIVE.COM

www.ETHICALALTERNATIVE.ORG

Dr Ira L Shapira is an author and section editor of Sleep and Health Journal, President of I HATE CPAP LLC, President Dato-TECH, President of  Chicagoland Dental Sleep Medicine Associate and has a General Dental Practice.  He was a founding and certified member of the Sleep Disorder Dental Society which became the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, A founding member of DOSA the Dental Organization for Sleep Apnea. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine, A Diplomat of the American Academy of Pain Management, a graduate of LVI. He is a former assistant professor at Rush Medical School's Sleep Service where he worked with Dr Rosalind Cartwright who is a founder of Sleep Medicine and Dental Sleep Medicine. Dr Shapira is a consultant to numerous sleep centers and teaches courses in Dental Sleep Medicine in his office to doctors from around the U.S. He is the Founder of I HATE CPAP LLC and http://www.ihatecpap.com
Dr Shapira also holds several patents on methods and devices for the prophylactic minimally invasive early removal of wisdom teeth and collection of bone marrow and stem cells.

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I HATE CPAP! LLC provides information on Sleep Apnea, Dental Sleep Medicine and alternative to CPAP for patients who are CPAP intolerant. The website http://www.ihatecpap.com has valuable information on treating sleep apnea utilizing oral appliances.