263: CHTV in Mexico: Innovations in Stem Cell Medicine
with Dr. Rafael Gonzales and Dr. Eduardo Ulloa
This is part 1 of a special 3 episode series, on location in Cancun, Mexico. I’m seeking out the little-known alternative health treatments that happen to be accessible to all of us. In this episode I’m inside the World Stem Cells Clinic with Dr. Rafael Gonzales and Dr. Eduardo Ulloa. We're discussing how they're harvesting their patients' own natural killer t-cells, and we’ll hear how they’re treating everything from autism to lyme disease with their modern stem cell treatments.
Use this link for a free consultation at Advanced Biomedicine Stem Cell Treatment Centers:
https://worldstemcellsclinic.com/
Transcript:
Episode 263
Dr. Pompa :
One of my favorite things to do ever is to travel places and bring you information you’ve never heard before, and really, the only way I can bring it to you is go there personally. Listen, we are doing a first here on Cell TV. I traveled to Mexico, and my goal was to bring some alternative treatments that could only happen in Mexico. You get what I’m saying? It’s treatments that most people don’t know about.
This is a three part series that I’m doing. The first interview which you’re about to hear is I interviewed a scientist, Rafael Gonzales. I’ll tell you, he is doing something that nobody in the US is doing, and I believe only one other organization in Japan is doing. They’re harvesting natural killer cells. Wait ‘til you see this interview. You’re talking about an answer that nobody is talking about, at least here in the US, for autoimmune, cancer, Lyme disease, other infectious diseases and causes in gut. He talks about how these cases are reversing severe gut disorders. Wait ‘til you hear that, and it’s available. It’s available to us, so I’m bringing you that.
We talk about some very special cells that he has created and that they’re using in studies. Again, you have access to these amazing stem cells, so we’re going to shed light on that. Then we bring the top cancer clinic in the world, and we’re going to be talking about those episodes. This is a three-part series. You’ll see me live in Mexico. Wait ‘til you see this particular episode. Stay tuned.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith, and this is Part 1 of a special three episode series that was recorded on location in Cancun, Mexico. Dr. Pompa was down there to search out some alternative health treatments that also happened to be accessible to all of you, so stay tuned for this great episode that takes place at the World Stem Cells Clinic. Dr. Pompa will be interviewing Dr. Rafael Gonzales and Dr. Eduardo Ulloa, and they’re just going to be discussing how they are harvesting their patients own natural killer T cells and how they’re treating everything from autism to Lyme disease with their modern stem cell treatments.
Stay tuned to the end because the World Stem Cells Clinic is offering this audience a free consultation, and I will also put the link in the show notes for you. You could also stay tuned to hear about our sponsor, which is HCF’s Live It to Lead It event which now has a livestream option, so you can get that link at the end of this episode. I hope you enjoy. Let’s welcome Dr. Pompa, Dr. Eduardo, and Dr. Rafael to the show. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa :
All right, hey, welcome, live from Cancun, Mexico, Dr. Rafael Gonzales.
Dr. Rafael :
Yes, yeah, pleasure.
Dr. Pompa :
Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, I really love these on location experiences because you really get a feel for what somebody’s [00:03:20]. We hear things out there, but when it comes to stem cells and that’s the topic today, I had to come personally see. Right now, in the world of stem cells, there’s a lot of bad stuff going on. There really is.
Dr. Rafael :
There is. I agree 100%.
Dr. Pompa :
There’s a lot of amazing stuff going on.
Dr. Rafael :
There is a lot of amazing stuff.
Dr. Pompa :
Right, and that’s why I came here, so welcome to Cell TV.
Dr. Rafael :
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. I’ve been fortunate to be part of cell therapy is more what I call it because we dabble in not only stem cells but cells in general. Cells are so important in our life because it’s the functional basic unit of life in general, and it’s what makes us live day to day and function day to day and, hopefully, live a good quality of life more than anything else. I’ve been in this sector for quite a while. I did one of the first clinical studies and I was part of the team at University of California, Irvine years and years ago, actually working with embryonic stem cells. That was a long time ago.
Then I actually transferred into the adult stem cell sector and into cell biology in general being focused on working with any cell type in the body, whether it be a cell from the heart, the lung, the liver, and any type of stem cells, fortunate enough to be able to work with many practitioners, many, many whether cardiologists, pulmonologists, general practitioners, functional med doctors through the American Academy for Anti-Aging teaching stem cell fellowships and, most importantly, understanding and seeing cells in a lab such as the lab that you see right behind me.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, right there.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, that you see that you’re able to produce cells. Then there’s a big difference with somebody working with stem cells. If you can’t see them underneath a microscope and understand how they function and how they work and have an experience with them, you really don’t know cell biology, and you really don’t know stem cells. That’s where I’ve been fortunate and then to be able to translate it into a clinical condition. I am a PhD, a scientist in this sector. We not only do stem cell work, but we also do other cell biology we were talking about earlier, which is actually…
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, you’re going to hear this.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, working with natural killer cells, which—let’s actually start off maybe working from there a little bit first before we go on to the stem cell sector. These natural killer cells are basically cells that are in our body, and they have a purpose. The purpose is they’re part of the innate or immediate immune response and have mostly three purposes. One is to find and target a virus. Secondly is to find and target cancer cells. We all know when you go outside you’re exposed to sun. There’s a mutation. Your immune system has to wipe that out immediately and remove it.
Then lastly and it’s one of the biggest targets that we’ve actually focused on is a target senescence. What is senescence? Not everybody has heard of this term. It’s basically one of the fates of your cells in your body. One is natural cell death, apoptosis. Secondly is necrosis, basically trauma. The cell explodes, and it’s a necrotic event. Then lastly, your cells have a finite amount of cell divisions. Then they age, and they become senescence, senescent.
Dr. Pompa :
This process, natural killer cells, it’s actually one of the things that really interested me and brought me here because nobody’s doing this, at least that I’ve heard, and we have this massive surge of Lyme disease. We have a massive surge of autoimmune, obviously cancer. Again, I mean, you can’t make any claims here, but you’re doing this. This therapy would really approach all of these things in a very unique way.
Dr. Rafael :
Yes, so the purpose of it more than anything else is to get your immune system back to when you were young. Notice as you’re young, unless you have a genetic predisposition to cancer, you don’t get cancer, but as you age, as soon as you hit 50, the propensity to get cancer is actually 50%.
Dr. Pompa :
Goes way up.
Dr. Rafael :
As you age, it becomes higher and higher. It’s because these natural killer cells are no longer natural killers. I call them dormant [00:07:26]. All they do is signal, and we actually have quite a bit of data that actually demonstrates this as you age. What do we do is we can actually take these cells from you, and then we can actually culture expand them, meaning we can actually propagate this ex vivo outside the body. We activate them to a younger state, and we put them into your body. The purpose of it is that it actually makes your immune system younger because it wipes out those senescence age cells. Senescence, once again, is a cell that no longer divides, secretes factors that’s actually bad.
For instance, you see fibrosis. Fibrosis is actually a senescent cell; cirrhosis of the liver, senescent cells. Gray hair is senescence. The cells are not functioning correctly.
Dr. Pompa :
Darn, yeah, okay.
Dr. Rafael :
Wrinkles and so on and so on, so these are senescent cells that are not functioning appropriately, and it’s part of natural part of aging. If we can reduce the amount of senescence, we can actually keep your immune system healthy.
Dr. Pompa :
I mean, again, that’s why the application is so vast. I mean, cells aging prematurely and cells aging—well, even just poorly aging, I mean, basically, bad DNA, etc., I mean, that’s a causative factor in disease. Obviously, just leading to inflammation and not feeling well. Matter of fact, when you had it done to yourself and you said to me—I know when we spoke on the phone the first time you said, oh, my gosh, you feel amazing for days. I mean, why is that? It’s just downregulating inflammation?
Dr. Rafael :
It’s, basically, downregulating. It’s controlling the environment per response, basically forcing your body to reproduce cells that are actually needed, younger cells. Now the new NK cells that are actually in there circulated are much younger.
Dr. Pompa :
What people have to understand is, I mean, really, so many diseases are the immune system misfiring, where you have an overstimulation of an inflammatory part of the immune system. Then there’s another part of the immune system, the regulatory immune system, that’s not downregulating the inflammation, so you see a correction with this process.
Dr. Rafael :
Correct, yeah, you do. You see a really, really large correction, for instance, what we had discussed. Serendipitously, we found individuals that had gut issues, and the gut issues are gone.
Dr. Pompa :
You told that story, yeah.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, so it’s pretty crazy. I mean, some of the things that—for instance, one of the patients that we did it, part of the questionnaire is how are you doing? How are you feeling, etc., etc.? In the questionnaire, he was like, “Oh, I generally feel healthy. I generally feel well. The interesting thing is I can now eat a lot of other foods that I couldn’t eat before.” “Why was that?” “I had inflammatory bowel syndrome before, and now, it seems to have subsided.”
We go back and do test markers on this, and we [00:10:09] specific proteins which are IL-17, IL-21, and inflammatory ones that deal directly with gut issues. This individual had these things very elevated prior to therapy. We look up to 120 days after, and they’re now normal of that of an individual such as myself and [00:10:25].
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, and if you can fix the gut, you can fix a lot of things.
Dr. Rafael :
You can fix a lot of things. We know that, yeah.
Dr. Pompa :
I know they’re going to ask this question, okay. What is that process, meaning that how do you get these cells where you get them from? It’s pretty easy, actually.
Dr. Rafael :
Relatively simple, it’s just a simple extraction of blood. It’s actually a quarter pint of blood. When you normally do a blood donation, you donate a whole pint. This is actually a quarter pint. Then from there, we purify just the white blood cells, and then from the white blood cells, we then purify—focus on working on just purifying NK cells. NK cells as far as the white blood cell process goes are anywhere from 5 to 15% of that cell population that we all have in our body. We normally have anywhere from one billion to two billion NK cells that are circulating on a daily basis. Like I said, as we age, they’re just signalers. They’re not attackers. They need to attack, and they need to kill.
Dr. Pompa :
We had a conversation earlier, and we were talking about different viruses, like Epstein-Barr virus. You have a theory. It’s just a theory, but you see a lot of really sick people like I do, right?
Dr. Rafael :
Yes.
Dr. Pompa :
I have a theory about Epstein-Barr virus, how it’s an opportune—but talk to them about that. This natural killer cell process really applies here. Obviously, it has an amazing effect on Epstein-Barr virus, but tell them your theory here.
Dr. Rafael :
Correct, well, my theory is actually that these opportunistic viruses actually force your immune system to go somewhat into overdrive and just target that and that’s it, and then all these other illnesses can take charge and take over, for instance, Lyme disease, bacterial in nature. Cancer, your immune system is busy targeting these things, and cancer pops up because the immune system actually is so busy doing something else. Unfortunately, we don’t know why, some individuals, Epstein-Barr virus affects them a lot harder than others. That’s one of the things that we need to figure out, how society…
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, I have a theory there myself.
Dr. Rafael :
It’s a matter of coming together and taking these therapies and taking methods of why this is transpiring and making individuals healthier.
Dr. Pompa :
Really, it’s fascinating. What do you seeing with Lyme right now? We’re seeing this explosion of Lyme, and like many things, Lyme leads to other debilitating conditions like arthritis, obviously fatigue. What are you seeing with this treatment?
Dr. Rafael :
With this, what we basically see is a regulation of the immune system, so the immune system can actually target the actual—the bacterium that’s actually transpiring and any other things that are happening. Fortunately, as we actually said—actually, unfortunately for the patients, there happens to be a correlation with individuals that have Lyme and almost every single one of them have Epstein-Barr virus, very, very similar to cancer patients, very, very similar to patients that have mold exposure too. We’re seeing the same exact thing on a regular basis.
Dr. Pompa :
I’d throw heavy metals in there too.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, and that’s another thing that we actually see, yeah, exposure of these too. We actually see a regulation of the immune system. Your own immune system becomes healthy. Individuals, their viral titers go down substantially, and then the symptoms that they have of the disease actually decrease substantially.
Dr. Pompa :
Fascinating, most of the research that you’re doing here—I mean, we are in Cancun, Mexico, but you’re actually doing it in the US.
Dr. Rafael :
All the research is actually done in the US.
Dr. Pompa :
All of it.
Dr. Rafael :
Then we translate that research here clinically in Cancun.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, so is there advantages to that?
Dr. Rafael :
First and foremost, we are US based. We are a US-based company, and there’s a lot more science aspect. There’s a lot more availability to what we need to do in the US. We have a large lab. We need flow cytometers. We need to look at genes. We need PCR. We need to look at proteins, Western blotting, these type of things that we use on a regular basis as scientists, much larger than this lab culture facility where we culture expand cells. The stem cells which we’ll talk about in a little bit is something that we manufacture according to manufacturing practices and look at those guidelines to translate those guidelines over there to over here to make sure that we’re successful.
Dr. Pompa :
Let’s move into the stem cells conversation. I’m really glad we had that conversation first. I do have to ask this. How many people, how many clinics are actually doing this natural killer cell process?
Dr. Rafael :
I don’t know. If you look it up on clinicaltrials.gov, you will find over 750 clinical studies on cancer. Targeting, basically, other diseases and to regulate the immune system, I don’t know of too many. I do know some centers, of course, I believe in China and in Thailand that are actually trying to do similar work, and it’s becoming more of a mainstream type of thing. Remember, this is cell therapy, immune enhancement. As you said earlier, every single disease has an immune component to it, and if we’re not healthy, if our immune system is not healthy, we are not healthy.
Dr. Pompa :
Here, they gave me—I know already people are going to say I want to contact you all. I was going to say—voice it out. There’s no way anyone listening would be able to write down the http://, so we will make it happen. We’ll make sure it’s on the screen here, and if you’re a podcast listener, then go to my website at drpompa.com and find this episode. All right, you get the free consultation as well. What they’re going to do is you’ll get a free consultation if you’re part of my community and you call in from the show and, basically, to see if whatever you have going on applies and if you’re a good fit here for the clinic. You all are doing some amazing work. I want to make sure as many people hook up with what you’re doing as possible.
I have so many people watching that—Alzheimer’s, autism, brain conditions and you’re doing some unique work here as well. I know when they first started doing some stem cell work in the brain, I mean, they were drilling holes in the brain. Now you all are going in the cord itself, and in 24 hours, a lot of these new cells are actually entering into the brain. What’s going on with this research?
Dr. Rafael :
What we basically have is methods of course to get cells where they need to go. As a lot of people know is, if you do an IV—and an IV is phenomenal because anything that’s transpiring neurodegenerative—neurodegenerative disease is actually something—I’m from the spinal cord injury sector, and it’s something that I know well. If it’s transpiring here inside this encased thing, it’s actually started outside a lot of times, and when it starts outside, it’s actually a problem. Now, for instance, in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, you have compromise of the blood-brain barrier, the blood-spinal barrier too, and your immune system can now actually go in and cause damage. This system, the inside, the brain and spinal cord is not set up because there’s no immune system there to actually deal with these type of problems.
What we do is we look at taking care of you systemically, and when we take care of you systemically, it’s basically an IV. The bad part about an IV is—it’s good but it’s bad also. When you do an IV, it basically goes first to the lung, so all the cells are basically sequestered to the lung. Then they have to find a way to what’s called [extrovate] out of the lung. They have to smash and extrovate, and then they have to find what’s called their niche. Cells work on these, basically, lock and key system, which is called a ligand receptor in science or medical terms. A problem in your body is a signaler is somewhat—could be the receptor and the cells can actually be the actual key that goes into that lung. It finds where it needs to go, but however, the vast majority of it’s stuck in the lung. It’ll set out all these proteins or released proteins as everybody has heard of as paracrine effect.
Dr. Pompa :
Right, meaning it stimulates your body into healing.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, it stimulates your body into healing. That effect basically happens because of cells that are just stuck in the lung, but then eventually these cells, not all of them, wash and migrate out. We’ve done studies on the particular cells that we actually used on this so that we know that they’ll stay in the lung anywhere up to 14 days, and then after that, they go to the rest of the places in your body and signal. If we can directly find ways to go into, for instance, the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord which is done through an intrathecal injection, which is relatively simple…
Dr. Pompa :
Simple, yeah.
Dr. Rafael :
It’s a lumbar puncture. That’s one aspect. In some cases, when we have to look at more invasive measures, we can actually do what’s called a—sort of similar to an angiogram. It’s an intra-arterial injection where we either go into the femoral artery or the radial artery, and then we drive that all the way up into the carotid artery. Then we inject cells up. This way, it’s the first point. All the blood has actually gone through the carotid artery all the way up into the brain and into the central—into the spinal cord, so this way we have direct access on that.
Dr. Pompa :
I just toured this facility and a hospital right across the street where you do, actually, most of the injections, right?
Dr. Rafael :
Right, yes.
Dr. Pompa :
You said something amazing. You said just being in the hospital environment makes a big deal, especially with some of these cases. You have access to everything. Just in case something would go wrong, there you are in the hospital and, by the way, oh, my gosh, amazing hospital.
Dr. Rafael :
Yes, very, very nice.
Dr. Pompa :
I think one of the things they said on the tour was there’s three hospitals in Mexico that have international…
Dr. Rafael :
Approval, whether it be from Canada, United States, or the EU also and then this is actually one of them. It’s actually also the nicest hospital.
Dr. Pompa :
Oh, the rooms were like—I mean, they were like nice hotel rooms, some of the rooms. I was stunned. There you go. If you come here, it’s amazing, actually. I was really impressed. I’m impressed with just every aspect of this, I mean, the cleanliness, the professionalism. When it comes to the world of stem cells, for me, that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come. Especially if I’m recommending others coming here for these top-notch procedures, man, I expected to see a top-notch place and I did. Yeah, that’s fantastic.
Let’s get into the world of cells a little bit because you all are doing some unique things with cells. I said this to you; in the world of stem cells right now, it’s the Wild West, meaning that people are claiming certain claims about the number of cells, the proteins that are in their cells, the viability of the cells. You were saying, yeah, that’s all fine and good, but there’s so many ways that that’s a lot not true. We’re seeing that because people are not getting the results from certain procedures. Because the stem cells that are on the market, frankly, they’re crap. What are you all doing different here? I read two of your studies, by the way. That was very, very impressive, and you can talk a little bit about that. What are you doing different in the world of stem cells that brought me here?
Dr. Rafael :
In 2010, we spend—actually, before then, we spend a substantial amount of time investigating cells because cells age as we do. The older you are, the older your cells are, and the frequency of stem cells in your body is less and less. More than anything else, babies are born normally healthy the vast majority of time, 99.9% healthy with no problems. We actually looked at taking the umbilical cord tissue and then taking what’s called a mesenchymal stem cell out of it. This is a particular stem cell that has properties of the two most important things that can transpire for being healthy and for maintaining health. One is controlling the immune system, meaning suppressing that pro-inflammatory response and increasing the anti-inflammatory healing response. Secondly is increasing blood flow or vascular genesis or angiogenesis the way we call it.
The purpose of that is that—think about this. If you don’t get oxygenation blood flow to all the vital organs, there’s no way healing transpires. It does not. This is what these cells are designed to do, these particular cells, and we are talking about pure stem cells. When we discuss a lot of the products that are out there and then they’ll hear about, they talk about stem cells. I don’t call them stem cells products because they’re not true stem cell products. They are self-therapy products. The vast majority of the products that you see over the counter in the US or whatever contain a very, very small percentage of stem cells. The only way you can actually obtain pure stem cells is by culture expanding them in labs such as the one you see back here.
Dr. Pompa :
That’s what you’re doing here.
Dr. Rafael :
That’s what we’re doing here. Even if it’s from you, if I take bone marrow from you, the frequency of stem cells is—in a 40-year-old, it’s about 1 in 250,000 so, basically, .000025%. Even in these cord blood products, the frequency of it is maybe 1%. It’s relatively low versus these products that are pure stem cell products. Now, the difference that we do is we…
Dr. Pompa :
The expansion I think is what you’re saying, meaning that—I had my bone marrow done, but again, there’s no expansion there. There’s not that many cells.
Dr. Rafael :
There’s no purification.
Dr. Pompa :
Right, no purification.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, there’s no purification of it.
Dr. Pompa :
I’m older, so I have to admit this; I’m older. The fact is I have less viable stem cells, so the advantage of taking it from a cord is it’s a younger, viable stem cell. However, it’s still not expanded.
Dr. Rafael :
Correct.
Dr. Pompa :
Okay, so explain that, what you’re doing.
Dr. Rafael :
The process basically occurs when we start doing—working with petri dishes. We call these culture flasks or CellStack systems where we take cells and we extract out pure stem cells, which in this case are mesenchymal stem cells, and then from there, expand them out. Now, the concerns a lot of times that we discussed is what transpires with quality? What happens if I get something that has a genetic problem? Now, we basically take and obtain a lot of cords. Then first and foremost, we have a screening process from the donor, which basically requires that—which is hard to find, believe it or not. They’re free of cytomegalovirus virus. They’re free of Epstein-Barr virus, along with all the other standards that are done in the state of California. We worked out of California.
We look at all this, and that basically gets us down to a frequency of about 15% of the US population. Then from there comes another very vigorous part that we have to look at. Everybody thinks of the transferring genetics from one to another, and what we basically do is we grow these cells up almost until they almost die, until they’re almost gone. We run this thing called the karyotype type analysis, and we make sure that there’s no chromosome aberrations. We will find problems when you culture cells, though, because they can go array. We make sure that these cells are clean, and there’s no problems with them, alongside testing for mycoplasma with different bacteria, all the different viruses, the fungus, and everything else. That’s what makes us—puts us at the quality that’s much higher to make sure that we have no issues.
Dr. Pompa :
I actually wanted to see the quality. One of the things that I had said is, hey, I actually want to see it because there’s so many claims out there. I’ll explain it. I’ll let him explain, but what you just said, here’s the actual words and the actual…
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, this is actually just—believe it or not, this book is actually only one or two donations that have been done of samples that we actually look at and then, first and foremost, of course, all the testing of mom that we have to do, all the way from hepatitis, HIV, CMV, Epstein-Barr virus, etc. Then afterwards, when we start, like I said, culture expanding these things, we also look at, of course, the different—these are called karyotype right here, on this page right here. This is what we look at. We look at chromosomes. We make sure that, of course, they’re aligned the correct way, and there’s no aberrations, meaning there’s no genetic issues. Believe it or not, what we culture there, if something comes up, 99% of the times it actually transpires in the human, and there’s a problem in the human. We’ve had cases such as I just told you where we contact—maybe we contact mom.
Dr. Pompa :
You’re saying the donor, human.
Dr. Rafael :
We tell donor. We tell them, hey, you know what? We found this. Is there a history of this? Can you test for this yourself? They actually go back, actually test for it, and they find exactly what we found; culture is actually founding to that too.
Dr. Pompa :
I mean, obviously, you’re doing this safety. They expand it, so you’re getting a better result. You can get injected with stem cells, but if there isn’t enough viable cells or even cells, you’re not going to get the result. With this, we’re making sure we’re getting clean cells. We’re making sure it’s, obviously, safe from viruses, molds. You name it. We’re also getting an expanded product that actually—it works.
Dr. Rafael :
It’s a pure stem cell product, yeah.
Dr. Pompa :
Let’s talk exosomes. This is a new hot topic. I’ve done shows on exosomes. You have a different view of exosomes. I mean, obviously, it’s exciting. It’s future, but an exosome just by itself in your opinion isn’t the future. Explain that a little bit.
Dr. Rafael :
No, I am a proponent of exosomes in some cases.
Dr. Pompa :
Me too.
Dr. Rafael :
The thing is an exosome—so remember first and foremost is an exosome comes from a cell, and before it’s an exosome, it’s actually called an endosome. It’s a packaged product that’s actually produced inside the cell. Then it’s excreted out. The conditions that we put these in…
Dr. Pompa :
Let me back up one second. Maybe someone listening or watching this hasn’t watched some of those shows. A stem cell produces an exosome, meaning that it’s a communication molecule, that it will communicate with another cell or some part of your body that starts healing. It uses it to communicate, okay, so therefore, when we thought stem cells, all of the healing was the stem cell coming in and attaching and driving the healing. Then we discovered these exosomes that actually are the thing that’s, basically, driving the healing.
Dr. Rafael :
The signaling.
Dr. Pompa :
The signaling molecule.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, the signaling molecule for it.
Dr. Pompa :
Okay, so there you go. Sorry about that.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, so not only stem cells but all cells actually secrete…
Dr. Pompa :
All cells, right.
Dr. Rafael :
Secrete these exosomes.
Dr. Pompa :
Matter of fact, there’s bad exosomes too. Cancer cells produce exosomes.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, they produce an abundance of them that cause more cancer. Cells are put into an artificial condition to secrete exosomes and to secrete proteins, and that artificial condition may not be ideal for you, or ideal for me, or for anybody that has a specific disease. Yes, they work, but however, these are in nature proteins, and these are packets of proteins that are protected. They’re relatively small. They’re about a thousandth of the size of a regular cell.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, 100 nanometers.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, around there versus cells in 10 micron range, around there. They’re much smaller, and they’re packets of information. There’s also proteins on the outside that you can—when you extract this. The way we do this is, basically, we grow cells in an ideal situation. We put them in ideal situations. Then we starve them off, and they secrete packets. It’s the same exact thing what we discussed earlier is, when you put your body into starvation mode, which is fantastic, your cells now slow down their division. Remember, the more cells divide, the older we get, and we know one of the only proven ways…
Dr. Pompa :
Short telomeres.
Dr. Rafael :
Correct, that’s one of the only proven ways to stop telomere attrition is stop eating, period, just stop eating.
Dr. Pompa :
I’ve done that and they know that.
Dr. Rafael :
Stop eating. It’s the best way to actually do it. It’s the only proven way. When we put our bodies in this type of mode, then they start secreting factors, and it’s because they have to survive. My partner helps me. He’s a cell. I’m a cell. He helps me and I help him by secreting all these factors as we start off until eventually we die, and we secrete all our information, all our protein that we needed based on that environment that’s there to try to survive.
It’s an artificial environment versus when I take a cell. A cell does the same exact type of thing. However, when I did an exosome, it’s one and done. Proteins have half-lives, and it’s relatively short. They may do their job quickly, but it’s not consistently going on. Depending on the way it was growing up is what’s going to be in the product.
When I put a cell into your—when I put a cell into, for instance, a joint, the joint now has to—the cell has to try to survive, and the way it survives is by saying this joint or this area is missing X, Y, and Z. I need to secrete X, Y, and Z so I can survive, and it’ll keep spewing the stuff out, spewing it out, spewing it out, spewing out these exosomes and these extracellular matrix. That’s the other thing that people spend a lot of time focusing on is exosomes, but you’re not understanding that you have two massive important proteins in your body. Collagen is the number one most important protein in your body, and number two is hyaluronic acid. Without those two, your cells do zero, do not function, and you have disease. These cells secrete this stuff too besides secreting out these exosomes.
When they’re put in an environment that’s actually harsh, that needs these signaling cues, they can now do the appropriate thing, and they can do what they’re supposed to do, and they last a lot longer. These cells eventually will last, let’s say, a week, two weeks, three weeks, depending how harsh the environment is. In animal models, we have evidence that they actually live—in our case, the cells that we used, for 14 days they lived there. If we translate that into human conditions and there’s other individuals that agree with this, you’re talking about anywhere from three months to six months. It just depends on the environment that’s going on within you. However, the important aspect is that they’re forced to try to survive, and they secrete out a lot more of what you get when you just use an exosome-based product.
Dr. Pompa :
You’re creating your own exosomes, right?
Dr. Rafael :
Correct.
Dr. Pompa :
You kind of explained it, but explain again why your exosomes are in fact different.
Dr. Rafael :
The product that we use is not a pure exosome-based product. We looked at targeting—we’ve had it for years, and we’ve spent some time. We actually did some studies within the clinic of looking at focusing on—we tried various different formulations, like I said. You, basically, put this in an artificial environment, and you can find ways by manipulating what you’re putting them in to secrete different things. When we discuss orthopedics, we discuss more normally problems in collagen, normally problems with hyaluronic acid, but at the same time, we want the long-term effect of the growth factors, the healing, and causing the reparative effect of exosomes, which is—and our product contains—we did a lot of time study. We picked one formulation out of 50 that we actually studied that secretes an abundance of hyaluronic acid, that secretes an abundance of collagen, and most important for orthopedics is chondroitin sulfate stats, which is really, really important. That’s what makes our product different.
Yeah, we measure other ones, protein concentration, and somebody can tell you there’s an X amount of protein concentration of something in there. The other important aspect of it is is it viable protein? We had discussed this earlier. Proteins degrade and they become somewhat nonfunctional depending on the condition that you put them in. We make sure that ours are functional. They’ve been frozen at the right time.
We just have done an abundant amount of study. We spent years studying anything before the product actually comes out. We published this paper on our umbilical cord cells back in 2010, and it took us about four or five years just to start using the product. Then from there, recently we’re now talking about—we’re doing actually clinical—we’re in collaboration with University of Florida to do some work on dermatomyositis and polymyositis, which is autoimmune disease, but secondarily to lung, pulmonary fibrosis, and secondarily focusing on the autoimmune market of rheumatoid arthritis, which is the funded study that we’re actually doing now.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, that’s huge. The autoimmune is just exploding, and I believe there’s an answer here. You said about the proteins—you said, Dr. Dan, there’s so many people are putting out literature about their product based on the proteins, etc. Basically, you scurried over it, but this is why there’s some deception in there. Explain that.
Dr. Rafael :
Yeah, so the deception is, basically, there could be a protein which is—in science terms, we do the simple thing. It’s called the BCA assay. It’s an assay that tells you how much protein is somewhere, but that doesn’t tell you that the protein is functional. It just tells you that the protein is there. When you run something a little bit different, that’s a Western blot. That’ll actually tell you if the protein is degraded or not, and not too many individuals are actually doing that or looking at that.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, that’s huge. I want you to introduce so people watching and listening—if they say, okay, I’m going to Cancun for my vacation of my stem cells, I want them to actually meet one of your treating doctors here. Is there anything else before I let you exit the stage here? Is there anything else that you all are doing that they need to know that’s making—that you say this is what we do different?
Dr. Rafael :
No, the thing that we actually need is individuals such as Dr. Pompa to actually get you healthy prior to. For instance, we have a lot of individuals that contact us and want to get cell therapy. Unfortunately, not everybody is a candidate of it, and that’s why we have a screening process for it to make sure that you are a good candidate for it. I mean, if you come to us and you have COPD and we ask you the simple question—you sound like you’re a candidate. We ask the simple question; are you smoking? You say, yes, you are. We tell you are you willing to quit smoking? You tell us no. You’re eliminated. If you don’t fix the problem, there’s no resolution to it.
Then we need individuals such as you to make sure people get rid of their toxins, their model exposure, be dieting right, be eating right before so your body’s ready for these cells as we’re going to do for you later on. I know that you’re completely ready for this, and we’re going to make sure that he’s in an ideal situation, that he’s eating right. He takes care of himself. This way, you set yourself up for success.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, no, couldn’t have said it better and, again, look for the link here. We’re going to provide it for you. If you can’t find it, tell him you came from Dr. Pompa’s show. You’ll get free consult to see if you’re a candidate. I mean, honestly, make sure they can help you and that’s important. You’ll have to answer some health question, obviously, but absolutely worth it. That’s a thank you to my viewers and listeners, so appreciate you doing that. Yeah, so let’s take a quick time out, and let’s bring in your treating doctor.
Dr. Rafael :
Perfect, thank you.
Dr. Pompa :
Doc, thank you, man. Appreciate it.
Dr. Rafael :
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, Dr. Eduardo, welcome to Cell TV.
Dr. Eduardo:
Nice to meet you, nice to be here with you all.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, so we’ve got the science, but let’s talk a little bit. I wanted them to meet one of the treating docs here. Yeah, I mean, you’re doing some exciting work. How long have you been with [00:38:02]?
Dr. Eduardo:
About two years now.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, okay, and did you have any background with stem cells before?
Dr. Eduardo:
Yes, a little bit but more in sports medicine. I did a little bit of my post-grad training in the States, and I have a diploma in the sports medicine too at the end. I’m right now focusing more in younger patients, in the kids.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, that’s it. Okay, so being around stem cells, what are some of the amazing stories that you’ve seen?
Dr. Eduardo:
People recovering starting at—well, from very bad injuries. I’ve been through some injuries. I know how it feels to not complete your routine during the day because you’re going through pain, through chronic pain and discomfort in your daily activities. There has been a bunch of patients that have been very grateful after the therapy because now they’re capable of following with their daily activities. For me, that makes a big difference. Just the fact of waking up in the morning without having the same pain or diminishing the pain that you’re having, that’s a lot for me.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, or diminishing health. Talk about the procedure a little bit. I mean, I think that we have so many new people probably going, yeah, I’d like to get this done, but they’re nervous. Talk about the procedure. Does it hurt? How do you avoid that? Walk them through what it looks like and what it takes.
Dr. Eduardo:
Sure, yeah, well, actually, it doesn’t hurt at all. It sounds more aggressive than it is. What we’re basically doing here is doing a bone marrow aspiration in the hip bone. The hip bone is the one that you can touch in your lower back, so the patient is completely…
Dr. Pompa :
That’s if you’re using your own cells.
Dr. Eduardo:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa :
Cord cells are another option.
Dr. Eduardo:
That’s correct.
Dr. Pompa :
Where you are, that’s how they do it.
Dr. Eduardo:
That’s correct.
Dr. Pompa :
I had that done, by the way, and I thought it was very easy.
Dr. Eduardo:
Yes, it’s very simple, very simple procedure. We only even have to use one tiny needle for going through the bone, and the patient is completely asleep because we help them with sedation inside of the hospital. Everything is done in the OR, so you don’t have to be worried about any…
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, you said that what you use—if you go to sleep happy, you wake up ten minutes later happy. I thought that was funny.
Dr. Eduardo:
Yes, we only use one agent for sedation, sevoflurane, which is an inhaled gas which makes it very easily for the patient. Yeah, you will not suffer about any pain, any discomfort. It’s very simple procedure. It usually takes less than an hour for doing the whole thing. What else?
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, no, that’s good. I mean, that’s pretty much the procedure. I mean, it’s obviously pretty simple. You’re talking about the joint. We did make mention of doing some of the intrathecal injections into the spine, so talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Eduardo:
Yes, once we have the bone marrow sample, we handle it to our lab manager, Tony, who’s actually working right now in the lab. He help us doing the separation of the cells that we need from the ones that we do not need, trying to get rid of most of the red blood cells, for example. Once he’s done with that process, he will come into the OR again with two concentrates of stem cells.
Dr. Pompa :
At the expansion.
Dr. Eduardo:
Correct, one will be infused intrathecally, which is just a [00:41:28] word for saying application through a lumbar puncture and the other one for the IV, okay, and the whole thing is about an hour, hour and ten minutes.
Dr. Pompa :
For you, easy.
Dr. Eduardo:
Easy-peasy.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, easy-peasy, yeah, I mean, I say that because people always say, oh, my gosh, I would love to get this done, but they fear the needle. I can tell you, I’ve had this done enough to say it’s nothing. Okay, so what about later that day, the next day, the week? What are the recommendations as far as—because that’s the other question I get. How long is going to set me back, the recovery?
Dr. Eduardo:
It’s a little different. If we’re talking with kids, with younger patients, or with adults, okay. If we’re treating kids, they might complain a little bit during that day of some maybe nausea, if that’s the case, which happens less than 10% of older patients because there’s sedation involved. As you may know, any process that involves sedation or anesthesia is one of the most common side effects to see and also because of the [00:42:34] reaction. You don’t have to be worried about this situation. Again, it’s just having some nausea for maybe a couple of hours, and it’s not that bad if that’s the case, which just happens in, again, less than 10% of older patients.
Dr. Pompa :
What about activity levels? Do you have to…
Dr. Eduardo:
Limitations for that day I would say…
Dr. Pompa :
Let’s say I got my back done, my knee done.
Dr. Eduardo:
Oh, okay, if we’re talking about adults, yes, we ask for patients to please rest for the next ten days just to…
Dr. Pompa :
Can I go to work?
Dr. Eduardo:
Yes, of course, you can go to work.
Dr. Pompa :
It’s not bedrest.
Dr. Eduardo:
No, you can continue with your activities. It will be good to take that day off, the day of the procedure, of course.
Dr. Pompa :
That’s it, really. That’s all I did. I don’t even know that I took a day off. I did take the day of. The next day I was back to what I was doing. I wasn’t working out in the gym or anything crazy, but I was mobile, walking around, pretty normal, right?
Dr. Eduardo:
Still, you can go to gym. Just wait seven days.
Dr. Pompa :
All right, there you go, yeah, so any other advice that you would give our viewers?
Dr. Eduardo:
We look forward to see you here. If you are willing to discuss more about therapy, you can always set up an appointment.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, they do. For my viewers and listeners, good point, is you get a free consultation to see if you’re a candidate. Talk to them about your condition. I recommend you do it. We came here to the best of the best.
Dr. Eduardo:
Correct, not just with me. There’s some other doctors.
Dr. Pompa :
Yeah, no, absolutely, I want to at least meet one of them anyway.
Dr. Eduardo:
Sure, of course.
Dr. Pompa :
We appreciate you all.
Dr. Eduardo:
It’s been a pleasure.
Dr. Pompa :
All the work you all are doing and great show. I mean, this is the place. It’s why I’m here. I had to see for myself the work you all are doing and see if it’s—people are talking. Now I have to come look.
Dr. Eduardo:
It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Dr. Pompa :
Absolutely, yeah, and you all treated me well so, all right, great show. I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. You can check out the consultation offer as well as learn more about the World Stem Cells Clinic in our show notes. Don’t forget to check out our next HCF seminar in Nashville where we’ll have a lineup of top health experts who will explore the latest research and most effective strategies in the field of cellular healing. We now offer a livestream option, and you can check that out at drpompalive.com. You can enjoy the seminar from any location in the world.
We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, or sharing the show with anyone who may benefit from the information heard here, and as always, thanks for listening.
