The world’s leading stem cell organization today launched a website aimed at stemming the tide of rogue cellular therapies.
The site — called ‘A Closer Look at Stem Cell Treatments’ — offers advice to would-be stem cell tourists on what questions to ask of prospective clinics, and calls on the public to submit the names of clinics suspected of providing unproven treatment for review by experts. Eventually, the site’s host, International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), will grade individual clinics based on the safety and efficacy information they provide to the society.
“[T]here are organizations out there that are preying on patients’ hopes, offering stem cell treatments — often for large sums of money — for conditions where the current science simply does not support its benefit or safety,” said Stanford University’s Irving Weissman, president of the ISSCR, in a statement. “We want to stress through this initiative that there are internationally accepted medical criteria for getting new medicines into clinics.”
One clinic that is likely to get a thumbs-down is the Institute of Cellular Medicine in San Jose, Costa Rica. Last week, government authorities ordered the stem cell clinic to stop offering treatment, saying there was no proof that the clinic’s cell-based therapy for multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries and other illnesses was effective or had received the blessing of a third-party regulator.
The decision to single out individual clinics appears to be a last minute turnaround by the ISSCR’s Task Force on Unproven Stem Cell Treatments, which held yearlong deliberations into how to tackle the threat of stem cell tourism. Initially, the task force was planning to evaluate only particular protocols; now, the society plans to ask each clinic submitted for review to supply evidence of medical ethics committee oversight and regulatory approval.
These details, however, are in marked contrast to the price and procedural information used by the International Cellular Medicine Society (ICMS) for its survey of 22 clinics, as we reported last month. One of the major differences between the ISSCR and ICMS is that the former views adult stem cells as biological drugs, whereas the latter sees the same thing as an individual-based medical procedure that does not require regulatory approval.
The relationship between the two international stem cell societies “boils down to a difference in mission,” ICMS executive director David Audley told Nature Medicine in March. “The ISSCR is focused on clinical trial data, whereas the ICMS, through our report and our treatment registries, is focused on observation and peer oversight. Those two combined will make for a powerful tool for clinicians and scientists moving forward.”
Meagan Comerford, an ISSCR spokesperson, says the society is now assembling a new committee to review clinics and respond to inquiries, and the website notes that clinics should be ranked about five months after initial inquiry.
Image via closerlookatstemcells.org