Stem Cells For Longevity with Kevin Ferber | Longevity Optimization Podcast
Today I'm speaking with Kevin Ferber from American Cell Technology on the Longevity Optimization Podcast. In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of stem cell therapy. We discuss the process of harvesting and banking autologous stem cells, exploring the regulatory landscape surrounding stem cell therapy and its various applications in regenerative medicine and aesthetics.
Kevin shares valuable insights into the mechanisms of action of mesenchymal stem cells, emphasizing the importance of proper culturing techniques for their effectiveness. Our conversation also touches on current advancements in stem cell research, potential future applications, and how these therapies can contribute to longevity and improved health outcomes.
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Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Stem Cell Therapy
02:08 Understanding Autologous Stem Cells
05:01 Regulatory Landscape of Stem Cell Therapy
07:59 Mechanisms of Action in Stem Cell Therapy
10:14 Growing and Culturing Stem Cells
14:45 Personal Experiences with Stem Cell Procedures
18:34 Utilizing Stem Cells for Longevity
21:33 Applications of Stem Cells in Aesthetics
24:35 Real-World Success Stories
27:25 Future of Stem Cell Therapy
30:58 Cost and Accessibility of Stem Cell Banking
33:26 Conclusion and Future Directions
Transcript
[00:00:00.02] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
All right, so today on the Longevity optimization podcast, I am going to be speaking with Kevin Ferber from American Cell Technology. This is an exciting podcast because I just did a procedure actually with you guys yesterday. So I had my Adipose stem cells essentially harvested, and then they're being sent off to your lab in Florida. So I'm excited to get into all the details of these stem cells. So welcome to the podcast, Kevin.
[00:00:25.18] - KEVIN FERBER
Thank you for having me, Kayla. Excited to be here.
[00:00:27.13] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely. So, real quick, before we get into all the, like, great details of yesterday and what's going to happen to the cells, just tell me a little bit about American Cell Technology and your role at the company.
[00:00:38.12] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, absolutely. So American Cell Technology is the largest personal stem cell bank in the US we're located in South Florida, and we're just an autologous stem cell bank. So when we say autologous, mean your cells with your own DNA. We don't mass produce cell lines or send them out to other people. So we actually work with individual clients like yourself and practitioners around North America that are doing regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy. And what our doctors will do is they'll take a tablespoon of fat like you did, or bone marrow, and they'll send it over to our lab. And at act, we can isolate those healthy stem cells you have from the Adipose or bone marrow and then grow them out in a, in a current good tissue practice facility, FDA registered. And inspected. And our lab techs will mainly isolate those cells, let them naturally self replicate, and then we cryopreserve those cells in time. I know we'll get into the details a little bit more, but then you'll have access to your youngest cells throughout your life. And in, in this process. When we started American Cell Technology, we realized there's such a limitation to cord blood and cord tissue storage facilities.
[00:01:40.12] - KEVIN FERBER
And so we started a brand, Vital Cells, which is a newborn stem cell bank. So very similar processing to what we do at act, but we do it from the core blood and cord tissue from parents, expecting parents. When they have their child at birth, they can send in their core tissue and cord blood samples. So we can isolate actually stem cells, culture, expand them, and cryopreserve those in time so that your child can their day one cells at age 20, 30, 40, 50 years old.
[00:02:08.07] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, I love that. And my husband and I are going to be doing that as well. And yeah, side note, Warren is also going to be going through this process, so I did mine yesterday, but he'll be doing it you know, soon either here in LA or in Austin. But let's just stick on the topic of stem cells. So it's a very popular, you know, word in therapy in the longevity space. Obviously I've been super familiar with all sorts of different stem cells for many years. But talk to us a little bit about the types of stem cells you're. You obviously autologous or your own. So what are the benefits of doing your own? Can you. And then maybe talk a little bit about regulation in general in the space.
[00:02:44.17] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, you make an excellent point about people using the word stem cells. And there has been a lot of bad press or misrepresentation of what stem cells are. Sometimes people aren't even getting stem cells and they're saying they're stem cells. So I think what I usually present at to different people is understanding the stem cell currency and what you're actually getting. So first is the source, to your point. So are you actually getting ste. We're dealing with mesenchymal stem cells which we'll get into a little bit. But some people advertise as amniotic fluid, which is a cellular product or prp, platelet lich plasma, which is. Which are not stem cells or exosomes. And what we're really talking about is mesenchymal stem cells. And then talking about the source. If it's your own, it's autologous or allergenic, would be a donor cell. So from our perspective, we're working with autologous mesenchymal stem cells. And mesenchymal stem cells are a blank slate of your DNA. They're anti inflammatory by nature and they have the properties to hone in on sites of inflamma, calm those sites of inflammation, help repair the body more naturally. They can secrete cytokines and other growth factors, but can also regenerate, help muscle tissue repair and the likes.
[00:03:51.07] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
So, okay, let's talk about, let's just think about the autologous themselves. Your own. So what are the other options? So there's mesochymal and then I've other. I've heard of other cells, maybe like mu cells or something.
[00:04:02.20] - KEVIN FERBER
So mu cells are derivative mesenchymal stem cells. And then there's also people talking now about V cells, he brought that up yesterday, which are. Aren't really stem cells and that's drawn from your peripheral blood. So if you're doing autologous stem cell therapy, most likely going to be mesenchymal stem cells. There's also an option to doing stromovascular fraction, which is a same day procedure. So similar to what you did where you go in and get your adipose extracted, there's a machine bedside that can separate your stem cells with a collagenase and then give those cells back to you. And that stromovascular fraction has mesenchymal stem cells and has various other types of stem cells. It's hematopoietic cell cord blood banks will advertise when you store your core blood, there's hematopoietic stem cells or red blood cells that can help for rare blood diseases. There's such a limited amount of cells in that cord blood that if you cannot actually utilize a bank or a resource that can self replicate those cells, it might not actually be useful.
[00:05:01.01] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Interesting. And what about regulation? So what is legal here in the States? What is not legal here in the States? We see a lot of like stem cell tourism. Just let's talk about the landscape.
[00:05:12.23] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah. In the US you have access to your own cells with your own DNA. It's completely legal to get your own cells back. There are in the regulation side of things, when you're doing autologous cell therapy, that's really the only stem cells that you can get IV infused in regulation. And when talking about autologous cells, they're naturally self replicated. We don't alter the cells or push them down different pathways and they're homologous. So your body is your full cells and that's what you're getting back of your cells. And as well as if you're going to be doing stem cell therapy systemically, so an IV infusion, they have to be autologous if you're going to get a sort of donor product, you won't see any live cell counts advertised. And then when talking about medical tourism, which you hear often, I'm sure you have a lot of friends that have kind of evaluated the landscape and if you call them, you can ask all these questions of where are the cells coming from, what are the sources, how are they grown out? But most of those abroad international clinics are going to be donor allergenic cells.
[00:06:10.18] - KEVIN FERBER
They have less regulations on one marketing and advertising. They don't run the risks of the FDA coming after you for false advertisements abroad in Colombia or Panama. But also you're not going to have access to your own cells banked there. So they use donor cells from umbilical cord or cord tissue from a baby that they'll culture, expand, and that's where you get this allogenic product. Which can be risky to get back into your system. These allergenic cells don't have your own DNA, so you're going to have foreign DNA. You don't know how they're actually processed or grown out. And so that's critical because when just talking about stem cells, it's not just, oh, how many cells, how many live cells do I have? But what is the processing technique? If you start to overgrow stem cells in a lab, you start to get more senescent in dead cells and overstress these cells. So it's critical that you're trusting a resource of how your cells are actually even grown out and stored, because you want these cells to be grown out in a healthy environment by skilled lab techs and cryopreserved in a healthy state and manner.
[00:07:09.04] - KEVIN FERBER
And I'm sure we'll touch on this a little bit. But the other risk of an allergenic cell is you can get graft versus host disease. So your body rejecting foreign DNA, transmission of infectious disease, because we can only test for a handful of infectious of hundreds diseases. And then thirdly, studies show allogenic stem cells are usually actually expelled from the body within 24 to 48 hours. And the whole purpose of regenerative medicine is to keep those cells in your body as long as possible. You want your cells to stay in your body so they can help repair naturally. But if they're getting expelled to your system and getting washed out, they're not going to be able to excrete those regenerative properties.
[00:07:46.23] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
When it comes to these autologous cells, are they able to actually integrate into tissue, or is it mostly going in, releasing the growth factors and promoting healing and inflammation reduction and then they're kind of exiting the body?
[00:08:00.02] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, it's a great question. There's arguments of their mesenchymal stem cells or medicinal signaling cells. And so they have both these properties. One property they have is they can become your other types of tissues, tendons, muscles, and those other types of cells, because they are these blank slates of DNA. But also they will excrete these cytokines, growth factors, exosomes that are these signaling cells to help repair the body, calm inflammation, and help your body get back to a healthier state faster.
[00:08:27.08] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Love that. Just to go back, you know, if anyone's listening this and is considering doing, you know, this medical tourism and getting, you know, potentially these allogeneic cells from a donor, and you mentioned that you can only test for a few of the infectious diseases. So what are the infectious diseases that for and then what are kind of like the unknowns that you can't test for?
[00:08:47.08] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, I'll give you just example of when you bank at American Cell Technology, we recommend a screen of infectious diseases so such as hiv, hep C, some of these quote unquote uncurable diseases today. And none of these diseases, if you had them, would stop us from banking your cells. But it's really proactive approach to helping the client because hopefully in 20 years from now there'll be a cure for HIV. And so if you are going to get your cells back and you told us you were cured of hiv, we'd recommend you send in a new so that we don't have the chance of reinfecting you. So with that you kind of only know what you can test for and the other, other diseases out there that we cannot test for. We don't know what the baby may have. They do a bunch of screenings at some of these foreign companies that will say okay, we, we did from healthy donors, mothers from non C section births, non vaccinated parents, but you don't really know the lineage of the actual baby. And if you're trusting anyone you want to be trusting your own cells or your own DNA versus God knows where the other sample came from.
[00:09:48.13] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense for me at this point in time. Obviously, you know, this is the route I'm taking so that feels the safest and like the best option for me personally. What about in terms of protocols and growing out the cells? So you talked about sometimes you can overgrow them or not grow them naturally. I suppose. Can you talk about how you do grow them naturally and what the other options are that some other companies are doing?
[00:10:14.00] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, absolutely. So when you cells will come in, we'll separate them in our lab and we plate your cells into a 3D plastic dish where we'll give it stem cell food or media with other nutrients and custom media. Then it's placed in a hypoxic chamber to allow these cells to naturally self replicate as they will. And then we'll do live cell count in that same process. We'll do quality control testing. So we'll do all your sterility contamination tests to ensure that the past stingent quality controls. There are other companies such as out of the country that will push these cells down different pathways. If you start altering the cell lines then you're going to do more than minor manipulation which would then fall outside the scope of these cells not being regulated as a drug. Some of the other international providers will push these cells down different pathways to try to treat different conditions. And so they'll add, they'll add different types of nutrients or other types of modalities or technology. And I talk about, see a lot of like CAR T therapy for instance. So altering these cell lines, you have to be testing to see what you're doing to these cells.
[00:11:18.20] - KEVIN FERBER
And so some of these clinics will do so they'll say okay, maybe we can get better results for neurological conditions by pushing these cells down different pathways. I'm not intimate to know what they do down in their lab, but they are trying to alter the cells to make them more beneficial for certain conditions.
[00:11:33.07] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Got it. Well, I mean, yeah, that seems really important. What is the medium or what is the cell food that you give these stem cells?
[00:11:40.06] - KEVIN FERBER
It is, the medium we use is from a international or a full international supplier based in the US It's a xeno free media. So we are only using the highest grade that is GMP compliant. But with that we combined a couple different nutrients so that it is custom blend to ensure that your cells are growing out in a healthy state. But it's very. The media that we use is very highly regarded in the stem cell culture both in the research and the clinical level.
[00:12:07.23] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Is it essentially like a nutrient? It's like different stack of different nut.
[00:12:11.21] - KEVIN FERBER
That you're giving as food that it.
[00:12:14.02] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Would naturally receive in the body, Kind of like mimicking that or.
[00:12:17.05] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah. And so we can put this in a controlled environment to let these cells eat and grow. And part of what you're talking about is how critical is it that the cells are growing in a healthy state. So there's only such a. The mesochemical stem cells, they'll culture, expand and grow out on plastic. And so you have a certain amount of surface area in that plastic for the cells. And so it's very critical that you don't let these cells overgrow or overcrowd them because you're going to start to stress out the cells, you healthy cells. So we don't. We make sure we only grow them out to 80, 80% confluency around. So confluency is just how, what the percentage of the cells are grown out in the plate. So then we'll actively take the cells off to ensure they're in a healthy state. Cell count them, viability count them and then cryopreserve them in individual vials.
[00:13:02.00] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Great. Can you. Does it have to be a plastic culture? What have you started using glass?
[00:13:08.17] - KEVIN FERBER
These cells adhere to Plastic and grow out on plastic. So when we do the culture expansion process, we'll place the will extract the cells, but there'll be actually different types of cells on the plate. And once we. We will refeed these cells every few days as our lab techs monitor them. And we'll actually take out the liquid media, dump it out, and then put in new media. And the cells that remain are the mesogama stem cells that stay adhered to the plastic.
[00:13:33.08] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Got it. And they're not. They're not picking up any microplastics, right?
[00:13:36.22] - KEVIN FERBER
No.
[00:13:37.05] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
That's a real hot topic, right?
[00:13:38.13] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, it's a real hot topic. But we're just doing just your pure mesenchymal stem cells and we're able to get them off and test for. To ensure we're just getting MSCs.
[00:13:46.19] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Okay, amazing. Well, I want to talk a little bit about my procedure yesterday. I will keep it kind of brief. So drove out to Orange county to Dr. Barr's office. So obviously there are different providers and we'll include a link to your website in the show notes that can actually perform this procedure. But it's essentially a baby liposuction. I would say just, you know, a little bit. I will say that Dr. Barr commented many times that I was quite thin, so I was excited to hear that. And so, yeah, you just get a little bit of fat. You said about a teaspoon, right. So it was painless. They did like a local anesthetic, lidocaine, and then they actually take. Took out the lidocaine, most of it after the procedure, which was nice. And it took about like 15 minutes, I think 15, 20 minutes. I did an IV beforehand. It is really important. You know, luckily my entire profession is health optimization, so I didn't have to really do anything too rigorous to optimize my cells. But if you're listening to this, you're thinking about doing it. I mean, the time is always now to start working your health.
[00:14:48.03] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
But I think trying to get your cells in the best state possible prior to getting them, you know, harvest is ideal. Right. I mean, I'm sure you can do it anytime, but ideally, yeah, the.
[00:14:59.08] - KEVIN FERBER
What's interesting is that it's a. It's a mini liposuction to your point, so your cells will stay dormant in your fat. And some people say, well, how do I optimize my health in the first 30 days before I get harvested? You're not going to be able to change your cellular matrix over that period of time. Yes, you have a healthy Lifestyle. So you're going to have a, a healthier consortium of cells in your fat versus the average human. Yeah, but it's a lifestyle change. But luckily from a tablespoon of fat, we can get plenty of healthy cells from almost everyone. Your cells may be healthier than some others, but with that being said, that's why we can potentially get a smaller quantity of fat from you. Because you're going to have a higher concentration of stem cells in your fat versus someone else who might be morbidly obese. They're going to have a higher concentration of fat cells versus their stem cells.
[00:15:44.04] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
That makes sense. So are like bad cells that you guys just toss out.
[00:15:48.20] - KEVIN FERBER
It is biology. And so sometimes we'll have cells that do not grow out and we'll ask for a new harvest. It could have been we didn't get enough stem cells from the sample. So someone sends in a smaller sample and maybe they have a lower concentration of stem cells. There wasn't enough seeding density for the cells. We may ask for a new sample as well as we get older clients that come in from their bone marrow. For example, your bone marrow cells tend to be older than your adipose stem cells because if you think about it, your stem cells in your inner bone are constantly being turned over within your immune system and are more stressed versus your adipose stem cells, say dormant in the fat and only turn over every eight to 10 years. So you're going to have these healthier, longer telomere length stem cells in your fat. If that does happen, we'd ask for a new sample. There are infrequent times, but samples can come in and they may be contaminated. And so we'd ask for a new sample that could be due to potentially a bacterium or maybe a dental infection that got through the bloodstream.
[00:16:47.15] - KEVIN FERBER
And so if that happened, we just asked for a new sample because we want to ensure that your cells pass into serenity control. So when you get them back, you know, you're just getting back your pure cells at the highest standards.
[00:16:58.03] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Dr. Barr was telling me that the. Yeah, essentially the telomeres or the age of the fat tissue or fat stem cells are younger than like most people's biological age. So that's good, right? Yeah, absolutely. Why would someone do bone marrow over fat?
[00:17:17.03] - KEVIN FERBER
More a physician's preference than anything. If you're getting a same day SVF we talked about versus a bone marrow stem cell treatment, there could be different types of cells in those types. But the only reason we would receive a bone marrow sample versus an adipose is because the physician feels preference to it doing that extraction. But we're still extracting the mesenchymal stem cells from each. So it's the same cell type, but from the adipose, we'd absolutely prefer it.
[00:17:46.13] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Interesting. It feels like it would hurt more, wouldn't it, to do bone marrow?
[00:17:49.19] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, it is a more invasive procedure and some of them have been trained to do so. And then some might think that the bone marrow cells are healthier than the adipose cells, but in the adipose they are younger and there tends to be more stem cells in the adipose versus the bone marrow.
[00:18:04.08] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Got it. Okay. So, yeah, going back to my procedure, I mean, it was again, really simple. 15, 30, maybe 30 minutes max. And I'm going to be releasing video too, like a behind the scenes going with me for the whole procedure. So people can see that it's, you know, relatively easy. And then in terms of why I'm doing this and like what the intention is behind this is, I'm super excited to do general, like longevity IVs. So once these, I think you said, it'll take about like eight weeks roughly to get these cells back. And when you go through this process, do you, the patient or the client would choose how many cells they want up front, Is that right?
[00:18:41.17] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah. So you can do it up front or you can do it as you go. When you send in your sample, just a level set kind of numbers, maybe in your tablespoon of fat, which we got 20 to 30 ccs of fat. So just a tablespoon, there might be 20 to 30 million mesenchymal stem cells in that fat. And so from there, when we plate it, we're able to culture, expand those potentially to billions of cells. But it, it costs, it takes a lot of time and it costs a lot of money to do that. So when people send in the samples, we're just not going to mass replicate them. So we'll get a batch of cells, let's say 60 to 100 million of them, and we'll put some in your master bank, which we try never to touch your passage zero. Your youngest cells you send to us just because as technology advances, we don't know, but those cells might be able to get trillions and trillions of cells. And then we'll have your working bank of say, 50 to 60 million cells that will continue to culture, expand either on demand as you see fit, or if you have a prepaid package, you could have a certain amount grown out and ready to go.
[00:19:37.10] - KEVIN FERBER
What are the benefits of that? You can have access to your cells within 40 to 72 hours. And that's what's really critical when you start talking about personalized medicine and regenerative medicine if you will. Because it's when you're in state of injury or any other use case you want to get these cells as soon as possible so they can go in and hone in on sites of the inflammation and injury and help repair the body, whether it's orthopedic and beating scar tissue and help your body repair itself more quickly and efficiently. Because scar tissue then today is just a band aid. And so if you could reduce the amount of scar tissue and get yourself to heal naturally, you'll reduce the risk of re injury.
[00:20:15.23] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
That's super interesting. Hi guys, I'm going to interrupt this episode for a brief announcement. As you may or may not know, I started Community for Females by Females and it's a female longevity optimization community. This is a place that you can connect with like minded women. We are all here to support each other and there's a variety of different benefits to being a member. You get a monthly ask me anything. So submit your questions and I'll answer them directly. We also have an entire library of courses on all of the important components of longevity such as labs, nutrition, exercise, sleep optimization, longevity optimization protocols that I'm doing along with with real time updates to my personal protocols. There are so many benefits of being a member of the community. We'll also be doing in person live events here in California and virtual events for anyone that can't attend. But if you're interested in joining the community I would absolutely love to see you there and I will include a link in the show notes. So yeah, use case would be either you know, joint injections if you know I or my husband were to get injured.
[00:21:23.01] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
We're probably going to be you know initially using them for these like longevity IVs. So maybe maybe one IV per quarter. What is the standard like number of cells that would go into an iv?
[00:21:33.22] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah and by no means making any medical advice here but yeah there are a lot of it depends in the longevity space for the number one property these cells are is they're anti inflammatory and I'm sure you talk about a lot but a lot of our bodies are just constantly inflamed whether it's an autoimmune condition or anything else. And so if you can get cells iv they can go and help help decrease inflammation and help your body perform at A higher level. A lot of studies that are doing or treating autoimmune or other systemic conditions are trying to quantify the amount of cells you would get per treatment. And so I would say the studies are between a half a million cells, upwards of 3 to 5 million cells per kilogram of body weight, with the most common being about a million cells per kilogram of body weight. So I'm about 200 pounds, which is 90 kilos. So there's some studies where people are getting 90 million cells for someone my size systemically. Quarterly. Depends on the condition though. Right? They're. Right. They're trying to treat a, an actual systemic condition. Maybe for a longevity protocol, maybe you're taking a smaller amount of vials and some of it's going to be dependent on what you're trying to treat, but also what your practitioner is going to recommend for, for your protocol on a quarterly basis.
[00:22:45.06] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, that makes sense. You can also use them like esthetically too. Right? So in like facials or maybe hair. Helping with hair growth.
[00:22:51.11] - KEVIN FERBER
Growth, yeah, absolutely. So we have physicians, some cosmetic doctors that are doing for stem cell facials. I'm sure you've seen a lot of your listeners have seen a lot of people are getting microneedling of exosomes. And so stem cells have exosomes in them, but the exosomes are a. Don't have live cells in them. So you can use your cells esthetically and also for hair restoration. There's a lot of physicians out there even using PRP for hair restoration. And that is really what I'd like to say is not even the minor league of stem cells it might have in that hair restoration. But if you can get cells into the scalp, let's say for me instantly, for instance, I actually got them injected in the scalp, in my head from a doctor, a hair doctor. We work with Dr. Cole in New York. And we were looking at actually hair regeneration over the year. And so he used this apparatus. How he explained it to me is that if you take a box of spaghetti and you smashed it down, all the spaghetti and you actually get a number that quantifies the density of those spaghettis.
[00:23:51.23] - KEVIN FERBER
And so we did a test before and we injected 70 million cells scalp and my head just cells, nothing else. And then we did the test a year later and that hair density increased by 90%.
[00:24:01.18] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Oh, wow.
[00:24:02.10] - KEVIN FERBER
Over the course of the year. And it's not a miracle drug by any means. And it does take time because your own cells repairing the body. So it's very different than getting A cortisone shot. It's your own cells doing the work to repair the body. It might take a couple months to feel the repair.
[00:24:17.10] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. Well, that's super exciting. I intend on kind of doing all the things with them, so I'm excited to get them back. Are there any specific cases that you can share? Some things that have been really exciting that you've seen providers that are in your network using the cells for and seeing results?
[00:24:35.18] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, absolutely. And we need to collect more data and do more research. And unfortunately, the US has kind of almost been a third world country when it's come to stem cell therapy and collecting that data. But anyone could go onto a Google Scholar and search mesenchymal stem cells and pick a condition. I think there's over 9,000 trials going on globally using mesenchymal stem CE. But some of the. And that runs from orthopedic to neurological, to urological to urology, and it really. Or to pulmonology. So it really just runs the gamut of such. But some of the cooler stories I've heard of physicians that are treating Crohn's disease with cells systemically and seeing some of their patients get off medication, we're seeing some really interesting results with autism neurological condition. And these aren't just kids that are three, four years old. These are ones that are adolescents or in their early 20s that really haven't seen any increase in functionality over the course of the years. And so a parent gave me the example of for the first time, this child was making eye contact or being sarcastic or calling him to ask how his day is.
[00:25:43.12] - KEVIN FERBER
And those are things that has just never happened throughout his life. And to me, and you might seem pretty minimal, but to them it's life changing. And, and this isn't. These cells aren't curing these neurological conditions, but it's increasing the potential, the quality of life. And that's kind of where the bank comes in, is that for these systemic or conditions neurological, you're going to need multiple treatments. Like you're even saying, if you're a longevity program, you're going to want to get consistent cells back to you. It's like going to the gym. You're not going to just lift once and say I'm fit forever. So you want to make it part of your protocol in getting these people and helping them improve their quality of life.
[00:26:21.02] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely. In terms of mechanism for longevity or is the primary mechanism the inflammation reduction, would you say?
[00:26:29.13] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, inflammation reduction and I would say neurological Improvement as well. It just depends. And I mean for even from an athletic standpoint, go a little off topic. But if someone's getting concussed inflammation in the brain, what are the protocols currently going to a dark room, going to a hyperbaric chamber. If you could get yourself cells back and put them IV and the cells will go to the sites of inflammation, help repair the brain, wouldn't you want that as an option for your cells to help get you back to baseline more quickly and efficiently? So you could see different improvements that way too. I mean we have some physicians that are treating Parkinson's disease, but from a longevity standpoint, more anti inflammatory. But you never know where your body's inflamed. You don't have a diagnostic that says hey, I'm inflamed here, I'm inflamed here. But if your cells are smarter than we are, they'll go through the bloodstream and find those sites of inflammation and help help calm those sites.
[00:27:19.03] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yes, absolutely. Do you see stem cells being like a part of like you know, general routine maintenance in the future?
[00:27:25.12] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, 100%. I think having your own stem cells at the youngest age, cryopreserved and ready to go, could be potentially your best insurance protocol for the future. Right now we're in the most archaic time in stem cell therapy, so I'm telling you what 9,000 studies are today, but I have no idea what's going to be the protocols in the future and what we can see. And with technology and how it's advancing we down the road there could be other soft platforms that could change those biologics of those cells. But you know, you'll have your 34 year old stem cells stored today to use throughout your life and then also you'll have a reserve of them should another company come along and want to be able to, to potentially change those characteristics, even make them better. Yeah, go through different pathways, improve the safety and efficacy of such. But I think it, it, if, if possible it should be the backbone of everyone's health insurance policy.
[00:28:15.10] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to, you know, I think this is like, this is a question I've had in the past, I feel like I have an answer to it now. But let's say you know, someone is 65 or 70 years old. I think you told me your parents recently just got their stem cells banked. One might think that, you know, if they are of older age, using baby cells could be a better option given the age. Right. A lot of people, I think when they think of Stem cells, if you're old, you're like, my stem cells are old. They're probably not working very well. What would you say to that? And what have you guys seen?
[00:28:49.22] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up. So we've done a external study with different samples we have at our bank. And so we have umbilical cord, adipose bone marrow. We have some clients that we have both their adipose and bone marrow cells from various different ages. And what we're testing for is telomere length. So the end caps in your DNA, which is really the best barometer we have for cell health. And yes, we saw as a whole umbilical cord and adipose cells tend to have longer telomeres in younger. And after about the age of 40, the bone marrow cells started to shortening of telomeres quite expeditiously. However, going back to the efficacy so you can, going back to that telomere length, you can have and bank your cells into your 80s and have plenty of healthy cells. And really what the studies are showing is that, that you want to have your own cells because they're going to stay in your body longer versus you having foreign cells such as the umbilical cord cells are going to get washed out of your body and not stay in. So maybe you might need more of your 80 year old cells to do the same as you as your 40 year old cells would.
[00:29:52.11] - KEVIN FERBER
But there's nothing safer than your own and there's nothing that's going to last in your body longer. And so yes, my parents got banked and they're in their 70s and they'll probably get IV infusions hopefully to help neurologically, but also get orthopedic improvements that they're looking to get. And then maybe they need more cells than they would of their 40, 40 year old cells, but it'll be their own cells or their own DNA. And I think what's very interesting about autologous cell therapy is it really is personalized. So your cells are going to have a different potency than my cells and your knee condition is going to be different than mine. So it really has to be personalized. So we talked about, okay, sometimes people might need X amount of cells for X condition, but your strength of your own cells, it's not a drug. So it's not going to be 50 milligrams of X all the time versus my 50 milligrams X is going to be different and our conditions are different. So that's where we need to continue to collect more data, to see on average where we're seeing results. But the safety's there.
[00:30:46.14] - KEVIN FERBER
The safety's been fantastic and the efficacy has been. Been great. It's really the risk. What's the risk? It's the money out of the pocket. It is a cash pay offering. It's not covered by insurance at this time.
[00:30:58.08] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. On that note, let's talk about costs. What does it cost to get this procedure and then getting the cells back? Talk a little bit.
[00:31:06.03] - KEVIN FERBER
That. Yeah. So practitioners will have all their different costs associated, but usually I would say typically to getting your sales bank, probably about 5,000 to 7,500 to get that banked. That would include first year of annual storage. There's an annual storage maintenance fee that's a few hundred dollars a year. And then you pay based on quantity of cells. And so there's different packages that you can prepay for a certain amount of cells, but it really depends on how often you're getting them. Some people are just have them stored in case they get injured, and some people are spending a few thousand dollars a quarter to get IV maintenance. So it really just depends on how frequent they are. But I would say for orthopedics, some people are spending between around like a thousand dollars for their cells, plus practitioner cost just for a joint injection.
[00:31:53.23] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And what about who is a good candidate for this? Was everyone kind of a candidate? Is there anyone that's not a good.
[00:31:59.08] - KEVIN FERBER
Candidate for most our candidates say active cancer. We would want them to be cleared of their cancer. But as we touched on a little bit earlier, if anyone has any sort of infectious disease that doesn't prohibit them from banking their cells, you're not going to reinfect yourself with something you already have. And so anyone is a candidate with the newborn side of things, it's better to get your. If you could get your child cell stored at birth, fantastic. But. And a lot of us didn't have that option. And so any child even that could get a mini liposuction. Maybe you want to wait till they're 18 so that they don't have to be under full anesthesia. We do have some toddlers that get banked and they'll be put under full anesthetic to do so. But usually they're doing that getting banked because they have a serious condition they want treated. Obviously you don't want to have to put your child through that if it's unnecessary. So most people are candidates. I would say no one ages out of it. You have plenty of healthy cells from your fat to do so and at least you can maintain the saf of having your own cells.
[00:33:00.08] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Absolutely. Well, this has been, I mean so informative. I can't wait to share the YouTube video. And we're also going to have a landing page and maybe some sort of incentive, I'm not sure do but we'll include that in the show. Notes, is there anything else that you think people should really know about about American stem cell technology, how it differs from other companies and or anything else in general that people should know about stem cell banking?
[00:33:26.22] - KEVIN FERBER
Well, I think as you go through your family planning process, you pro a lot of listeners that are looking or evaluating cord blood cord tissue banking. And you know this because you've done a lot of research, but not a lot of people do understand the limiting benefits of traditional cord blood cord storage facilities. So I'd probably just touch on that for a minute. Yeah, the difference of what we did in vital cells and why we brought it to market there are so cord blood cord tissue bank has been around for 30 plus years, but really what I'll call them is storage facilities because what they'll do is they'll take the core butter core tissue at birth and then they'll send it to a facility and they'll try to extract a lot of the red blood cells and then they'll cryopreserve the cord blood and usually the core tissue hole. They won't extract the stem cells. And what they definitely don't do is they don't culture, expand those cells. The best part of these cells is your baby's day one cells. But there's such a limited amount of actual stem cells in that sample. So for instance, the core bone and core tissue have about 1 to 3 million mesenchymal.
[00:34:28.00] - KEVIN FERBER
And when we're talking about quantifying dosage, the minimum we send back from the bank is 10 million and we're talking about maybe getting 70 to 100 million at a time. So I'm telling you that initial sample has about 10 to 20% of the minimum we'll send out of the bank. And that's the total amount you'll have throughout your child's life if you don't have a bank that actually isolates stem cells and grows them out. And what these traditional storage facilities will do, they won't sell count. Sometimes people have been paying storage facilities for decades and their samples are actually contaminated and they only release them for a certain amount of conditions that they have to approve.
[00:35:04.05] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Interesting.
[00:35:04.23] - KEVIN FERBER
With us at American Cell Technology with vital cells, we work with practitioners all over the U.S. various practitioners, from orthopedic, cosmetic to neurologists. So depending on what you're trying to treat, we can partner you with a physician in our network. And so with vital cell, you can store in that core blood, core tissue. With us, it's the same collection as any of these other facilities. But where the magic happens is really in the lab we're able to actually isolate those cells, culture, expand them, cell count them with viability to ensure you know how many cells you have, and then you can draw on them over time, you can continue to request more cells and you can utilize them throughout your life. So God forbid your child has a, a systemic condition that might need more cells, or as they get older and they start playing sports, they might want to have their cells to help further injury repair or something may happen. You'll have access to those day one cells from your child. And so really, I think that's going to be the future of healthcare, is there's more knowledge about this and parents have the opportunity to store their child's day one cells and have them actually grown out.
[00:36:10.05] - KEVIN FERBER
Oh, yeah. And then probably the last thing I'll say is that we talked a little about the quality standards in doing so and grow out the cells. And some of these abroad places, expanding live cells, they might mass produce these cell lines off one one donor. And what really happens there is you start to take away the efficacy of the cell and you start pushing them down hundreds, if not thousands of passages. You really start to decrease the actual stemness of the stem cell and you start to decrease the telomere lengths. So you got to really be cognizant of when you're storing your own cells, you're going to get donor cells of how they are actually processing and determining the quality controls to ensure what you're getting back are the healthiest cells possible.
[00:36:52.05] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
And you mentioned too that this is like a FDA overseen facility or how did you state it? And what does that mean?
[00:36:58.09] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, we're FDA registered and inspected, so they'll come in and confirm how we operate. In current good tissue practice, stem cell therapy or personal autologous cell therapy will never be FDA approved because FDA regulates drugs and these are not drugs. These are your own cells with your own DNA. And so practitioners will administer your own cells through the practice of medicine and the medicine medicines overseen at the state level by each board for the practitioner.
[00:37:26.06] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm so excited about getting my cells back. So glad that we made this happen. I first actually met you at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference. So we've been talking about this for about a year now since it's coming up again. And yeah, I'm so excited. If there's anything else, like, any more info that you think people should have, please feel free to share. But otherwise, where can people find more information?
[00:37:51.21] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, absolutely. I think we'll post a landing page with you for American Cell Technology and they can fill out their information. They can learn more on our americancelltechnology.com or Vitalsells v I T A L C L L S.com but for the landing page, if they fill out the information, which we can gather more info and then provide a practitioner in their area or in their specialty that could be a fit to help them learn more about the process.
[00:38:14.23] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
That makes a lot of sense. Do you. Would you say you have practitioners in, like, every state?
[00:38:18.22] - KEVIN FERBER
Yeah, we have coverage, very good coverage across the United States. And some people are willing to travel because they want a certain specialty. And that's important because the way practice medicine should be, it should be personalized healthcare. And so we want to be able to provide you a practitioner we think is a good fit for you based on what you want to be treated and. And what your conditions are.
[00:38:38.20] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Yeah. Well, this has been such a pleasure and yeah, can't wait to see everything go live. So thank you for joining me today.
[00:38:44.15] - KEVIN FERBER
No, thank you for having me. And excited to get your cells back and start testing and seeing some results.
[00:38:49.13] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
Same can't wait. Well, we'll keep everybody updated on the cells. I'm be posting too, like, about what my medical team comes up with in terms of what my longevity IV protocols are going to be. I'm definitely probably going to use some for, you know, some esthetic stuff. So I will keep everyone in the loop.
[00:39:06.15] - KEVIN FERBER
Awesome.
[00:39:07.07] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ
All right, well, thanks for being here.
[00:39:08.17] - KEVIN FERBER
Thank you.