These stem cell treatments cost millions.Donors get $200

“If you’re a student and you’re living on $700 a month, $200 extra is fine,” Burnow says. “I don’t mind paying them $200, but us it does not allow it, and we are committed to all circles.”

Many countries have rules that do not allow people to pay to donate their tissue UK is illegal pay for people to donate blood, plasma or other tissues, although donors may be reimbursed for expenses and loss of earnings. In Sweden, as in several other EU countries, donors can be compensated for their time but are not allowed to pay.

“Do they have to pay anything?” asks Hank Grell, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in ethical and legal issues in biology. But it’s a venial sin, not a mortal sin.” In the US, people can be paid to donate sperm, eggs and blood.

What makes the stem cells different is the cost of the treatment. Each donation yields about 50 ml of tissue that contains the mesenchymal stem cells that are used in its treatment. Those cells are then purified and replicated in Cellcolab. in the laboratory, eventually receiving about 200 treatment doses of stem cells per donation. that each treatment costs $16,500, which means that one donation can be used for more than $3 million worth of treatment.Bernow says he currently has 15 to 20 donors a year.

Of course, the cells aren’t the only factor contributing to the cost of a stem cell treatment. At $25,000 for an IV treatment, about $10,000 of that cost goes to the clinical trial, and the rest partially funds the cost of extracting, replicating, storing and transporting the stem cells. He states that the whole goal of his startup is to reduce the need for donors and the value of stem cells by producing more from each donation.

“It’s a super easy economy of scale,” he says.

For Greeley, the biggest issue with stem cell therapy is the treatments themselves. “My main concern is efficacy,” he says. The FDA has warned people about stem cell treatments not being approved in the US including statements about the conditions they may be used to treat,” the agency warned. post from 2020. “FDA is concerned that many patients seeking treatments and remedies may be misled by information about illegally marketed products that have not been shown to be safe or effective and, in some cases, may have significant safety issues that could put patients at risk.” are put under.

As for donors paying $200 for treatments that end up costing millions, Greeley is less concerned: “Welcome to capitalism.”

Updated on 2/12/2024 at 14:00 GMT. The number in the caption has been changed from thousands to millions to more accurately reflect the potential retail value of a single dose of donated stem cells.