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March 12, 2009

By Gregory Chotkowski, DMD, OMS, President, StemSave Inc.

In research centers, universities, and hospitals around the world, there are remarkable scientific advancements giving families the ability to recover valuable stem cells for use in future regenerative medical applications. With the recent discovery of powerful stem cells within deciduous teeth and third molars, both children and adults now have the opportunity to recover and cryo-preserve their stem cells both noninvasively and affordably, giving dentists the opportunity to be on the frontlines of medicine's most exciting developing field.

Dentists can now play a larger role in their patient's overall health by assisting them in the recovery and cryo-preservation of the patient's own very powerful stem cells. Introducing StemSave into a dental practice gives dental practitioners an opportunity to delve deeper into their patients' health concerns and to offer a valuable service that transcends oral health. Indeed, it speaks to the future health of the entire being.

Stem cells are unique in that they are the only cells in our body that can regenerate. They are the repair and maintenance cells of the body and are the key to unlocking the promise of regenerative medicine. The foundation of this type of medicine is based on the body's own natural reparative abilities; the stem cells' abilities to replace damaged tissue caused by aging, disease, and injury. Another unique feature of certain types of stem cells is their ability to differentiate, meaning that in addition to their ability to regenerate, they can turn into a broad range of specialized cells. This enables stem cells to regenerate organs, tissues, bones, and much more. We are witnessing stem cell therapies being developed to treat disease and trauma such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, MS, arthritis, heart disease, spinal cord injuries, joint replacement, genetic diseases, and many more.

The National Institutes of Health's discovery of stem cells in teeth, such as baby and wisdom teeth, gives dentists the opportunity to be on the frontlines of this exciting phase of personalized and regenerative medicine. There is little doubt that regenerative medicine is going to be the future of health care. Both the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services are pouring huge amounts of resources into the field. Both predict that the market for stem cell-based regenerative medicine will grow to more than $500 billion annually by the year 2020. This represents a 50-fold increase from less than $10 billion spent today. The U.S. military is spending hundreds of millions of dollars through its AFIRM (Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine) initiative into developing stem cell-based regenerative therapies to treat injured soldiers returning from war.

The promise of regenerative medicine is not science fiction nor is it decades away. It is happening today. We recently witnessed the first organ transplant with an organ built entirely from a person's own stem cells.

Why is this so remarkable?

Because the new organ, a windpipe, was grown with tissues from the patient's own stem cells and not a donor's, doctors were able to eliminate the need for the patient to take antirejection drugs. Otherwise, she would have had to spend the rest of her life taking powerful drugs which can have undesired side effects.

With the continued success of such procedures, stem cell applications will become the new standard of treatment. And, because utilizing a patient's own stem cells virtually eliminates the chances of rejection and minimizes the need for and use of immunosupression drugs, there will be no better stem cells for these treatments than the patient's own stem cells.

My profound appreciation for stem cells and the need to have access to one's own biological material comes from both a personal and professional perspective.

Personally, I have a 12-year-old son with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a currently incurable degenerative disease. And professionally, I am an oral surgeon and have spent a good portion of my professional career extracting teeth.

As a medical professional and as a father of an afflicted son, stem cells represent the best form of medical insurance we have to potentially help our families in the future.

Years ago, my son's degenerative disease led me to become involved in a parent advocacy group called ParentProjectMD. It was during these group meetings that the notion that stem cells hold the greatest promise for curing my son's disease came up time and time again.

As an oral surgeon at the time, I had become aware of the National Institutes of Health's research identifying powerful stem cells in the pulp of healthy teeth. While practicing dentistry, I was extracting teeth on a daily basis, and these extracted teeth were being discarded. It didn't take long to connect the dots and realize extracted teeth could enable people to recover and preserve their stem cells, and that it could be done simply and conveniently during a routine trip to the dentist. It was with the simple idea of empowering people to save their own stem cells that I founded StemSave.

The stem cells that exist in teeth are very compelling for a number of reasons. Most notably is their "plasticity," their ability to differentiate into other types of tissue such as muscle, neurons, bone, organs, insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells, skin, and cartilage to name a few. This means they could potentially be used to treat a wide range of disease and injury. The second most interesting thing about saving the stem cells from your teeth is they are your own — this is referred to as autologous tissue — so once they are reintroduced into the body during a treatment, they will not be rejected as foreign tissue.

In founding StemSave, I worked with doctors, dentists, stem cell experts, cellular biologists, and transportation experts to create a service that is both simple and affordable. We created a network of dentists that spans the entire country so anyone, anywhere can recover their stem cells. We work directly with dentists to make integrating StemSave into their practice as seamless and effortless as possible. Patients enroll directly with StemSave and provide us with the name of their preferred dentist. We then contact the dentist in order to provide them with the necessary tools and instructions so the tooth can be returned to our labs. All registered StemSave dental practices are provided with materials that are both informative and visually compelling. We work closely with the dentist to offer the training and knowledge so that patients can be made aware of the option to save the stem cells from a tooth that is scheduled for extraction.

We also provide all the tools to recover the extracted tooth. Once the patient registers with StemSave, a personalized transport kit is sent to the dentist's office in anticipation of the procedure. Our easy-to-use patented dental stem cell transport and recovery kit was designed to induce hypothermia in the extracted tooth/teeth and provide it with nutrients to assure its health and keep the stem cells viable during transport. This is accomplished without the use of frozen gel packs or refrigeration. We worked hard to make it very simple and hassle-free for dentists and their staff. Yet the kit was designed to be very robust. It doesn't matter where the dentist practice is located — summer in Arizona (when it is 120 degrees Fahrenheit or higher) or winter in Maine (when it is 20 degrees below zero), the kit creates an ideal temperature-controlled environment to maintain the health of the pulpal tissue and the stem cells while it is being rushed to our lab for processing, viability testing, and cryo-preservation. We also have an automated process with UPS whereby they automatically come to your office to pick up the dental stem cell transport and recovery kit. There is no paperwork to fill out or phone calls to make. We provide a completely integrated, paperless, efficient, and Internet-based service.

One of the most important things I learned from my research is that stem cells age along with the individual. It's one of the reasons we physically grow old — after we reach full adulthood, our stem cells fail to keep up with the degradation our bodies endure over time. Hence, the younger the stem cells, the better. That is why baby teeth are such a great source of stem cells. Recovering stem cells from baby teeth ensures the stem cells are young, strong, and vital. Wisdom teeth from young adults also present an excellent opportunity to collect stem cells. I am amazed sometimes by how far science and medicine have come. We are now at the point where a trip to the dentist could potentially change a life.

Click here to read "Stem Cells: How Baby Teeth Can Save Your Life"

Gregory Chotkowski, DMD, OMS, is president of StemSave Inc. As the parent of a son afflicted with an as yet incurable form of muscular dystrophy, Dr. Chotkowski has a profound interest in advancing stem cell research and a desire to offer families the opportunity to participate in new medical treatments derived from adult stem cells. Dr. Chotkowski is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, having completed his residency at Cornell University/New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is also an advisor to Caring Technologies, developing and providing BI Capture ("Behavior Image" video technology) and an advisor to MyChildHealthRecord.com, an online tele-health service for the autism community.

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