In my March 12 post on the UC Davis Veterinary Regenerative Medicine Meeting, I covered the general topics presented at the meeting.  Today I want to go a little more in depth on the results of stem cell treatment of arthritis that were presented at the meeting.  First, the keynote speech by Dr. Arnold Caplan of Case Western Reserve University was the highlight of the meeting.  Dr. Caplan described how stem cells really work (I will cover in a blog specifically on this topic very soon).  He pointed out that stem cells really act like very sophisticated drug stores, supplying just the right amount of the necessary drugs for relieving pain and inflammation and stimulating regeneration of tissues.  This is a key to how we have used stem cells in dog arthritis and has led us into research on how to potentially deliver these stem cells by the blood system directly.  He talked a lot about arthritis (his real passion) and how stem cells can dramatically reduce the pain of arthritis and stimulate new cartilage growth.  He also stated that adipose is the “richest source of stem cells in the body, so rich that culturing (i.e. growing) is not required to get a therapeutic number of cells.”  Dr. Caplan, a bone marrow expert of over 20 years, presented this information at the annual meeting of the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) also.  

Bill Casner was the keynote dinner speaker.  He is the famous owner of Winstar Farms in Kentucky and owner of last year’s winner of the Dubai Classic (Well Armed) and owner of this year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Super Saver.  His presentation on the regeneration of tendons and ligaments in the race horse was enthralling.  His passion for the health and wellbeing of the horse was clear.  As a surprise, his last topic was showing a video of his daughter’s dog running in the snow after being treated with Vet-Stem adipose stem cells.  Check out the many dogs treated with stem cells on YouTube by going to www.youtube.com and typing in the keyword Vet-Stem.

Hopefully the videos of the various lectures at this meeting will be available online soon.  In future blogs, I will cover the UC Davis research presentations on stem cells used to treat arthritis in horses and how the horse information has helped us create these effective treatments for arthritis in dogs and cats.