Could StemEnhance support tumor growth in the body?

By Christian Drapeau

This is a complex question to answer, and a full response is beyond the scope of this answer. Nevertheless, it is worth the attempt to shed some light.

In essence, given the body of data documenting cancer and stem cells, the question is legitimate; however, the answer is no. StemEnhance does not support tumor growth. Let's look at this question in more detail.

The confusion about stem cells and tumor growth comes from a number of elements: First, stem cells and cancer cells share two very important features that are unique to these two types of cells: 1. They are essentially immortal, and 2. They can become cells of almost any tissue. This resemblance has led some scientists at times to lump stem cells and cancer cells into the same "family." Additionally, there is one feature unique to embryonic stem cells (which ends up being one of the obstacles to their clinical use), and it is the fact that they lead to tumor formation.

Although the media has talked profusely about stem cells, the significant difference between embryonic and adult stem cells has rarely been stressed. This has led to the confusion that adult stem cells, too, can develop into cancer cells. Furthermore, since stem cells travel to sites of injury -- and tumors have been qualified as "wounds that never heal" -- people wonder intuitively whether stem cells might migrate into tumors and contribute to their growth.

To answer this part of the question, let me first say that although stem cells share unique characteristics with cancer cells, they are not cancer cells. One scientist put it simply: Cancer cells are cells that have "hijacked" the "stemcellness" of tissue cells. In other words, the part of the DNA that encodes for "being a stem cell," which is present in every cell of the body, may suddenly be activated in a tissue cell, granting it properties normally limited to stem cells.

But this cell conversion has nothing to do with the stem cells present in the bone marrow.

Likewise, some scientists have suggested that some forms of cancer could come from the cancerous development of tissue stem cells. In other words, stem cells present in tissues and specific to the tissue where they reside could at times go awry and lead to cancer formation. But again, this has nothing to do with stem cells in the bone marrow.

Bone marrow stem cells do have the ability to migrate into tumors, but then they transform according to their own DNA, which dictates that they remain healthy cells. Studies have shown that when stem cells migrate into tumors, they do not contribute to the growth of the tumor or to the development of blood vessels in the tumor.

Although many arguments can be made to establish that it is very safe to increase the number of one's own circulating stem cells, in the final analysis, only a scientific study can answer the question of safety. And so we did just that: We recently performed a study to see whether increasing the number of circulating stem cells with StemEnhance would enhance tumor growth in mice inoculated with human breast cancer.

The results showed definitively that StemEnhance does not support tumor growth; rather, StemEnhance suppressed tumor growth. Since the study was not designed to investigate the anti-tumor properties of StemEnhance, we cannot draw any conclusion in this regard.

We can say categorically, however, that StemEnhance does not support tumor growth. The results of this study are being prepared for publication in the scientific literature.