Recent research on autologous WBC's has been nothing less than miraculous Two new articles are important.
The first potential break through is in cancer research. A researcher at Wake Forest is convinced that cancer is caused by white blood cell suppression. In other words, our WBC's fail to do their job of picking off the cancer cells that brew in our bodies every day. However, this researcher believes that by taking healthy WBC's from donors he can cure cancer (at least in mice). This has so upset the traditional oncologic research community that he has been unable to get grants for his work. As a result, he is asking patients to self-fund the first human trial.
The major development other involves rheumatoid arthritis. In this treatment, researchers from the U.K. take white blood cells, reprogram them using a chemical cocktail, then inject them into joints with rheumatoid arthritis. This has been effective in animals in curing the disease and early human trials are beginning now.
What's the upshot? If you can take someones cells and miniammly modify them or provide healthy cells from a donor and cure these horrible diseases, the big pharma business plan will be in disarray. Basically, these are blood banking or minimal culture treatments that combined, would eliminate hundreds of billions in cancer and RA treatment.
All this brings us back to an age of autologous biologics where the idea of using drugs and pharmaceutical cocktails to achieve results may be changed forever, or at least the playing field altered. Already we are seeing biologic approaches such as platelet rich plasma that are gaining popularity among interventional pain physicians and those who treat acute and sub acute sports injuries. In addition, autologous stem cell approaches are allowing the treatment of chronic joint diseases. All of this points in a direction where the future will have a myriad of hybrid treatment approaches. In the end, we may all be using bits and pieces of ourselves as therapy.