Why I built a stem cell clinic and laboratory

It is dispiriting to treat patients with traumatic or degenerative osteoarthritis and know there are only so many things you can do to help – and that those treatments often don’t help enough.

As a sports physiotherapist, I know patients face a long treatment journey. 

I know how the progress of the disease will likely curb their mobility, test their pain tolerance and damage the function of their joints – cutting their involvement in sport and negatively affecting their lives. 

When I started my career, osteoarthritis treatment options were limited to pain relief, exercise therapy to strengthen the muscles around the joint, weight loss, surgery to “clean out the joint” and, eventually, joint replacement surgery.  It was the 1980s and even then we wondered if there was anything else we could do.

Surgical techniques, such as  joint resurfacing, injections of synthetic substances and other products, came and went. 

None proved to have disease modifying properties – and so far none are seen as part of the solution.  

Sophisticated supervised exercise regimes show efficacy but only when attendees are highly motivated and continue the exercise program long-term. 

At the same time, if patients manage to lose weight, take a sensible and gradual approach to activity and seek supervision, they attain results that on average are 20 per cent better than other approaches.

Then, in 2013, a sliding-doors moment. At the time, I was manager, operator and part-owner of LifeCare Prahran Sports Medicine. We were approached by a group from Monash University’s Monash Stem Cell Laboratory. 

The scientists and veterinarians had been using stem cell therapy to successfully treat osteoarthritis in dogs using donor stem cells from breeds that were known to suffer a significantly lower incidence of osteoarthritis. 

The Therapeutic Goods Administration, the federal regulator, allowed humans to be treated with their own blood and tissue, so stem cell treatment using people’s own cells (autologous) was legal in Australia.

After decades of wondering what else we could do to alleviate the suffering of osteoarthritis patients, I finally saw a possible new approach. 

With our accountant and a number of doctors, including Dr Julien Freitag, we invested as individuals and established a clinic and laboratory in Box Hill. 

We engaged the necessary scientists and other professionals and gained regulatory (TGA) approval, we began treating osteoarthritis sufferers with their own (autologous) stem cells harvested from their abdominal fat via a limited liposuction procedure.

The cells were processed, cultured and expanded to therapeutic numbers.

To date, about 1200 people have been treated with their own cells. Our published research results across all trials demonstrates that 75 per cent of those treated gained more than 70 per cent efficacy from the treatment. A significant improvement on other treatments.

Soon we found that taking fat from every patient’s abdomen and having them wait eight weeks until we had enough cells to inject is expensive, unwieldy and unaffordable for many people. 

The obvious solution was to develop an allogenic (donor) stem cell product and again gain the necessary approvals and do the research.

Earlier this  year, Phase I and Phase IIa safety and efficient studies of the donor product were published and  demonstrated that using donor mesenchymal stem cells is safe and the studies showed some strong signs of being effective. The results were published in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Open. 

In early September, the Australian Government, via the Medical Research Future Fund, provided us (that is Magellan Stem Cells) with a $7m grant towards further late-stage donor stem-cell research.

It has been a long journey that is not over yet. The science is more than promising. 

We hope Magellan’s upcoming late-stage research with hundreds of patients will demonstrate how well stem cells work for osteoarthritis and lead to the registration of the donor stem cell product, MAG200, for the effective treatment of osteoarthritis.

I think we are very close to answering the “what else can we do” question that has dogged me for decades. Watch this space!