Just as you would plan for your financial future, you can plan for your health future by storing your stem cells for your own use. Regardless of your age, you can choose to collect your Adult Stem Cells and store them so that your stem cells will be available for your use if needed in the future. The time for collection is NOW, when you’re healthy and unlikely to have stem cells already programmed for disease.
Why should I choose stem cell storage if I am healthy? It is difficult to determine when you will become ill or be stricken with a serious disease. A healthy person is a better candidate for Adult Stem Cell collection and storage for the same reasons that healthy people are better candidates for any medical procedure. They are generally free from chronic diseases, and their stem cells, having experienced fewer divisions, have a lower likelihood of somatic mutations. As you age, so do your cells, resulting in a steady decline in your cells' efficacy, efficiency and population. Collecting your cells TODAY, rather than later, ensures the storage of your “youngest” and “healthiest” possible cells.
Collection of your healthy adult stem cells prior to the disease process is important in order to avoid infusing cells that may already be damaged. Adults with a family history of cardiac disease, diabetes, cancer, neurologic diseases or autoimmune disorders should take advantage of this opportunity to protect themselves now, while they are healthy. Many people diagnosed with a disease requiring a bone marrow transplant are unable to find a healthy match, and if you are an ethnic minority, the chances of finding a suitable donor can be as low as 1–5%.
Storing your stem cells now assures your own stem cells will be available, if needed, in the future to treat a chronic or catastrophic illness.
There are tremendous clinical and economic advantages to autologous stem cell transplantation (receiving your own stem cells) as there are no issues with immune rejection. Engraftment with your own stem cells is faster, safer and much less costly than receiving someone else’s stem cells (allogeneic).
Plan for a healthy future now
Today is the best day to collect and store your stem cells... Your Cells Your Use Your Life®
The NeoStem® Collection Process
At NeoStem®, we take great pride in the fact that we are the first to provide you with an opportunity to have your stem cells collected and stored for future medical use, should the need arise. Historically, the most commonly used procedure to obtain bone marrow stem cells was a procedure known as “bone marrow aspiration”. Most of the time, this procedure is performed under general anesthesia and can involve a significant amount of pain and discomfort.
NeoStem® makes it Easy and Painless. Advances in technology now allow NeoStem® to increase the number of stem cells in your peripheral (circulating) blood. The process is called mobilization. Mobilization temporarily causes stem cells residing in your bone marrow, to migrate into the peripheral blood (a process that occurs naturally in the body when there is stress or injury).
Once you have completed mobilization, the next step is apheresis. Apheresis is a painless and safe procedure (similar to donating blood) which separates and collects, through a sterile, closed and disposable system, the stem cells from your peripheral blood. The remaining cells are immediately returned to you.
The collection process usually lasts about 4 hours, during which time you are in a comfortable, relaxing, reclined position, enjoying a great movie on a flat screen television, enjoying your favorite music with your own headphones, or even working on your laptop. This procedure takes place in a NeoStem® approved collection facility which may even be located in your physician’s office.
After the collection, approximately 50% of the collection is stored in an immune reconstitution bag and can be used should you be diagnosed with a stem cell treatable cancer, or become the victim of radiation or chemical exposure and require an immune system transplantation. The remaining ASCs are stored in up to 20 separate containers, which may be used for new regenerative medicine therapies in the future. All stem cells are stored and tracked through a system designed to return stem cells only to the patient from whom they were collected.
Once your stem cells are safely stored in a state of the art cryo-preservation tank, they will be available for the rest of your life. Studies have shown that stem cells preserve quite well and only very small amounts of your banked stem cells may lose viability throughout the course of the long term storage.
Who Is Not a Candidate?
As a policy, NeoStem® does not collect stem cells from individuals who have an active cancer disease, are HIV positive, have active hepatitis, are pregnant, weigh less than 110 pounds, have certain bleeding or clotting disorders, or those who are under the age of 18.
