Americans seek stem cell treatments in China

'I just wanted something back'
Patients seek out these unproven treatments after hearing about them from other patients, patient groups or Web sites for the medical companies. The patients’ stories posted on the Internet usually tell of some kind of improvement from the treatments — slight movements in arms or legs, fewer spasms or tremors, a feeling of sensation, an ability to sweat.

Chris Hrabik, 21, has been disabled since a 2004 car crash left him with limited use of his hands and legs. His father took out a second mortgage on their Oak Ridge, Mo., home to help pay for $20,000 worth of stem cell injections at a Beike facility in China.

More than a year after returning home, Hrabik says he has nearly complete use of his left hand, with improvement in the right. He can work on his customized 1993 Nissan 240SX, a modified number complete with hand controls and racing seats.

He said he was able to move his left fingers within days of that first injection of umbilical cord stem cells into his spinal cord. There’s been little progress since he left China, but he called the incremental changes significant.

“I just wanted something back, no matter what it was,” said Hrabik, who attributes some of the changes to the physical therapy that he had in China.

Expanding treatment options
Beike founder Sean Hu, who returned from abroad in 1999 with a doctorate in biochemistry, said the company has treated more than 1,000 patients, including 300 foreigners from 40 different countries. The only side effects have been slight fevers and headaches among a small percentage of patients, according to Hu.

He said patients with trauma injuries experience the most dramatic improvements; those with degenerative diseases such as ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, tend to improve initially but then slide back to their former condition within months.

“Patients shouldn’t have their expectations too high,” Hu said. “For patients to think they can walk again may be too much at this stage,” he said.

He’s now seeking venture capital to expand his web of treatment centers, labs and doctors and adapt proprietary techniques from researchers overseas.

“There is real potential here for China to take the lead in stem cells,” Hu said.

Ng Han Guan / AP At right, Kazakstan's Serik Ananchiev, 27, receives treatment at the Tiantan Puhua Hospital in Beijing, China, on May 24, 2007. Tiantan Puhua, a joint venture between Asia's largest neurological hospital and an American medical group, specializes in using stem cells injections to treat diseases ranging from stroke and spinal cord injuries to cerebral palsy and ataxia.

Also offering treatments is Tiantan Puhua in Beijing, a joint venture between Asia’s largest neurological hospital and an American medical group. Tiantan’s sunny, sparkling rooms are a far cry from the dour facilities and staff at most Chinese hospitals. Diseases treated there range from stroke and spinal cord injuries to cerebral palsy and ataxia, a rare neurological condition that can cause slurred speech.

The hospital says its stem cell injections are combined with daily, three-hour doses of intravenous drugs designed to stimulate production of the patient’s own stem cells. Physical rehabilitation and Chinese medicine are also part of the plan. A standard two-month course of treatment costs $30,000 to $35,000.

'We are making no promises'
“We want to see actual improvements,” said Dr. Sherwood Yang, head of the hospital’s management team. “We are giving them another option at the highest level of safety.”

Yang contends that 90 percent of patients show some results, with the rest suffering disabilities that are too far advanced to respond to treatment.

“We are making no promises,” he added. “It’s impossible to say exactly how any given patient will respond.”

Western experts point to the lack of documented evidence that cell treatments have any benefit for spinal cord injuries or degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.

“All of us in the so-called Western world, if there was something valid, we’d be the first to be offering it,” said Steeves, the Canadian professor and director of the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries, known as ICORD.

Three other experts were involved in the study that found no improvement in the seven spinal cord injury patients who went for fetal brain tissue injections in China. The patients were evaluated before and after their surgery.

The doctors stressed their observations were no substitute for a larger, more strict investigation.

“People are looking for a cure,” said Dr. Bruce Dobkin, a neurology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, one of the study’s authors. “They may come to do something based more on a gut feeling. It’s like looking for a religious miracle.”

'I have no regrets'
Along with the patients’ booklet of advice about exploring experimental treatments, Steeves and other researchers have drawn up a set of guidelines on how to do research in spinal cord injuries. Another researcher, Dr. Wise Young of Rutgers University, is assembling a network of Chinese medical centers and universities to train researchers and conduct studies that meet international standards.

Dr. Michael Okun, medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation, said his group discourages patients from seeking out experimental treatments unless they’re being done under the most rigorous research protocols.

“Stem cell therapy ... is a really interesting area that has a lot of promise for therapeutic approaches. But we’re just not ready to be putting stem cells into people’s brains at this point in time,” said Okun.

But such warnings don’t dissuade people like Penny Thomas of Captain Cook, Hawaii. She sought treatment for Parkinson’s disease at Tiantan, where doctors drilled into her skull and injected what she was told were cells from a donor’s retina. One year later, she said her tremors are almost gone and her medication has been cut to one-half of a single pill.

“I have no regrets and would do it all over again if need be,” said Thomas, 53.

So would the parents of Rylea Barlett of Webb City, Mo. The family raised nearly $40,000 from friends and neighbors to spend a month in China at a Beike facility last summer, hoping treatments would cure their daughter’s blindness. The child was born with an optic nerve disorder.

Dawn Barlett said her daughter responded to lights shone in her eyes within a week after the first of a series of five stem cell injections and can now make out blurry images on TV.

“She had no vision whatsoever before we left,” the mother said. “There was no hope otherwise.”

The girl’s optometrist, Larry Brothers, said: “It truly is a miracle.”

But when pressed for details, he said he detected “subtle differences” in Rylea’s optic nerve after her return from China. Asked if he would characterize her progress as incremental, he said that “might be too optimistic.”

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