Vietnam Testing Knee Stem Cell Treatment

According to Vietweek, Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world doing clinical trials to treat knee osteoarthritis (OA) using stem cells taken from a patient’s fat tissue. Two of the hospitals conducting the trials say the procedure has proved effective so far.

Bui Hong Thien Khanh, M.D., head of orthopedics at the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Medicine and Pharmacy University Hospital, said that, as of last January, his hospital had performed the trials on 21 patients with OA of the knees.

Doctors use a needle to harvest about 100cc of patients’ abdominal fat and extract stem cells from the tissues with a centrifuge. They also remove some of the patients’ blood and place it in the centrifuge to get platelet-rich plasma. They then put the stem cells and platelet-rich plasma under a low-energy laser before injecting the mixture into the degenerative joints.

Khanh said both the plasma and low-energy laser help activate dormant stem cells, which, after activation, can differentiate into cartilage cells to replace the lost ones, and stimulate the damaged cartilage tissues to regenerate.

Nguyen Van Kinh, Ph.D., an advisor at Bach Mai’s Vietnam Gene Therapy Center, said in the most severe cases, it (the stem cell therapy) only helps the cartilage tissues develop and release a fluid to improve the knee joint’s lubrication and relieve pain, and cannot return the knee to its original structure. The health ministry has also allowed People’s Hospital 115 and Van Hanh General Hospital in HCMC to carry out trials for two years starting in April.