Four-year-old Angela Irizarry was born with a single pumping chamber in her heart, a potentially lethal defect. To fix the problem, Angela is growing a new blood vessel in her body in an experimental treatment that could advance the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine. Doctors at Yale University here implanted in Angela’s chest in August a bioabsorbable tube that is designed to dissolve over time. The tube was seeded with cells, including stem cells, that had been harvested from Angela’s bone marrow. Since then, the doctors say, the tube has disappeared, leaving in its place a conduit produced by Angela’s cells that functions like a normal blood vessel.“We’re making a blood vessel where there wasn’t one,” says Christopher Breuer, the Yale pediatric surgeon who led the 12-hour procedure to implant the device. “We’re inducing regeneration.” Angela, who had little stamina before the operation, now has the energy of a regular kid. She is on several medications, but Dr. Breuer and her parents think she’ll be able to start school in the fall. Watch the video below.
At 63 years of age, Suzanne Somers is a true inspiration. In an article from News Max Health (written by Kathleen Walter and Nick Tate), Suzanne shares her latest breakthrough.
Suzanne Somers agonized over the decision to use a cutting-edge stem cell technology to reconstruct the breast she lost to cancer. When she began researching the procedure, it wasn’t being offered in the United States. Women who wanted to have it performed had to travel to Asia, Germany, or the Dominican Republic.
In an exclusive video interview with Newsmax Health (shown below), Suzanne details how she was able to work with doctors at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital and federal officials to gain approval to become the first woman in America to undergo the pioneering technique.
It’s the most incredible advancement in breast cancer treatment that I am aware of,” she says.
The procedure itself is enormously complex, but Suzanne explains the key elements of the technique.
“Here’s my layman’s interpretation,” she says. “They took fat from my stomach – boo hoo! – they took that fat and in a highly technical piece of machinery….whipped the stem cells out.”
By separating out the stem cells, doctors could “clean” them and identify the strongest cells, and discard the weakest ones, she says.
“So it was like the fat was just rich with those [strongest] stem cells,” Suzanne explains. “And then, again in layman’s terms, they took something that looked to me like a turkey baster and in the bottom of this breast they kept injecting, injecting, injecting this fat-and-stem-cell solution until it blew up to be the same size as the other one.”
Today, she says her new breast is very much like the one she had before her cancer.
“It’s beautiful, it’s soft, it has full feeling. It’s all me,” she notes. “And there’s no foreign object, and there’s no scar.”
Somers says she felt it was important for her to undergo the procedure not just for herself, but to help other women with breast cancer in this country.
“I am the first woman to legally regrow a breast in the United States,” she says. “It took me three years to get permission … with Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, to qualify me for a clinical trial with the [Food and Drug Administration].”
She wanted to go through the complex experimental process here – securing approval from a hospital institutional review board (IRB) and the FDA – so that other women in this country can benefit from her experience.
“It was important for me to have it done in the United States because … we’re almost like a Third World country here, relative to stem cells,” Suzanne says. “Science is supposed to progress. And the fact that they’ve put up these road blocks with stem cell protocols is pushing back science. It feels wrong. Most people have to spend their life savings going offshore to have this done in a country that’s not theirs with doctors they don’t know.”
She adds: “I wanted it to be an American achievement by an American doctor on an American woman so hopefully my clinical trial will open up the possibility for women in this country to utilize stem cell protocols. And hopefully this will be the first option in the future. It’s more humane.”
She acknowledges that the procedure is not simple or easy, and may not be for everyone.
“Liposuction is not for sissies,” she cautions. “When they removed fat from my stomach — I’m really happy to have given them that fat — but that hurt like crazy.”
Although she extensively researched the procedure before having it done, she also acknowledges feeling anxious about it, since she was the first to undergo the procedure.
“I was a human guinea pig because I was the virgin operation with Dr. Joel Aronowitz,” she says.
But she says the results were worth all the effort, pain, and anxiety.
“I cannot tell you what a thrill it is to look down and see myself whole again,” she says.
“I’ve had a hard time keeping my clothes on it looks so nice!”
She envisions a day when doctors can remove the cancer from a woman’s breast and immediately take fat “from whatever part of the body she wants to get rid of it” and regrow her breast using stem cells. She also believes the procedure might one day be used to replace other body parts — including limbs and heart valves.
“The future is so clearly in nanotechnology and stem cells, and I actually feel very proud that I might have opened this door a crack to stem cell protocols,” she says.
“In the future when we’re able to utilize them, you’ll be able regrow heart valves and, down the road, limbs. Imagine what this might mean for enlisted people?”
But for now, she says the message is clear: This stem-cell procedure can work for women with breast cancer, and she feels she’s in the best position to raise awareness about it.
“Women listen to me,” she says. “I’ve sold 25 million books around the world, and they look to me as the alternative layperson face. I wanted to do this not only for me, but I wanted to do this for them. And, in fact, I saw in the footage when I came out of the ether, the first thing I said — in my drug haze — is this is a great advance for women.”
To see more on Suzanne’s breast reconstruction procedure, go to her website at: suzannesomers.com..
Coming next week to Newsmax Health: How other women can benefit from stem cell procedures.
