translated from Spanish: Chile’s most effective global cell therapy in reducing pain in knee osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is a chronic disease that causes a degeneration of the cartilage surrounding the bones. People who suffer from this disease have symptoms such as pain, stiffness, deformity and decreased limb functionality, being able to seriously affect their quality of life and restrict their work activity.
In the case of knee osteoarthritis, this is the fourth most common disease in Chile with a prevalence of 5.7%, according to the latest National Health Survey, and is the main invalidating condition in musculoskeletal diseases. It is currently part of diseases with Explicit Health Guarantees (GES).
That is why the Chilean biotech company in cell therapy Cells for Cells developed an advanced treatment for knee osteoarthritis that reduces pain by up to 86% and improves the functionality of the limbs by 89%during the first year, achieving the best result worldwide.
Maria Victoria Cornejo (65) has been suffering from knee osteoarthritis for six years. Ten months ago she underwent the first dose of Cellistem in her right leg and the change “was very noticeable,” as she recounts. “The effect of therapy was almost immediate. Before I couldn’t climb stairs or take the bus without difficulty. Today I walk everywhere and climb stairs without problems.”
Therapy is currently the only one at the Latin American level to have a clinical development program, with six years of research between preclinical studies and then in patients.
The results of the clinical study – which considered Phase I/II and included 30 patients with a follow-up period of 1 year – were published in the scientific journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, showing that this therapy significantly outperformed the comparator treatment with hyaluronic acid.
Significant advances
The main therapeutic tool used today for osteoarthritis is physical therapy and maintaining a normal weight. Anti-inflammatory and analgesics are used when the patient has very important symptoms.
Another alternative used is the infiltration of corticosteroids or hyaluronic acid, however the effect of each of them is limited, very close to placebo, and short-lived.
Finally, for advanced cases the solution is the implantation of a joint prosthesis.
But unlike the other cell therapies that have been developed in the world, Cellistem-OA is allogeneic. This means that regardless of their origin (mesenchymal umbilical cord cells) can be used in any patient with a stable biological effect.
The therapy was developed with high quality standards and at a much lower cost than it means to produce a therapy for a single patient.
For Dr. Francisco Espinoza, medical director of Cells for Cells, among the main benefits of this therapy is the potency and duration of the symptomatic effect. “In the study, Cellistem-OA was far superior to its comparator and to 2 years of follow-up the group of patients who received cell therapy are still considerably better than those who did not.”
“Another advantage,” the doctor adds, “is that therapy has a clinical development program that has allowed its safety and efficacy to be studied in more than 100 patients,” he adds
To date, more than 350 patients have already been treated in different health centres in the country. Internationally, the treatment is being used in Peru and is expected to be commercialized early in Colombia and other markets such as the United States and Brazil.
Something significant in considering that by next year, more than 579 million people worldwide will suffer from osteoarthritis, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Because it is a disease that has no cure, advances in medicine and biotechnology become a light of hope for so many patients who could see their quality of life significantly improved.

Original source in Spanish

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