Will StemEnhance support tumor growth in the body?
This is a complex question to answer, and a full response is beyond the scope of this Newsletter. Nevertheless, it is worth attempting 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 with some more detail.
The confusion comes from a number of elements.
1) Stem cells and cancer cells share two very important features that are unique to these two types of cells; they are essentially immortal and they can become cells of almost any tissue.
This resemblance has led some scientists at times to lump stem cells and cancer cells in a same family.
2) 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 difference between embryonic and adult stem cells was rarely stressed, leading to the confusion that adult stem cells also lead to cancer.
3) Since stem cells travel to sites of injury and tumors can certainly be qualified as injuries, intuitively people wonder whether stem cells might migrate into tumors and contribute to their growth.
First, although stem cells share unique characteristics with cancer cells, they are not cancer cells.
One scientist suggested that cancer cells are cells that have hijacked the stemcellness of somatic cells, a code present in the DNA of each cells.
In other words, the DNA encoding for stemcellness, which is present in every cell of the body, may suddenly be activated in a cell granting it properties normally limited to stem cells.
But this 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 can migrate into tumors, but then they transform according to their own DNA, which makes them healthy cells. Studies have shown that when stem cells migrate into tumor they do not contribute to the growth of the tumor or the development of blood vessels in the tumor.
Nevertheless, although many arguments can be made to establish the safety of increasing the number of one¹s own circulating stem cells, at the end only a study can answer such question.
So we did. A study was performed 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 that StemEnhance does not support tumor growth but rather suppresses tumor growth.
The study was not designed to investigate the anti-tumor properties of StemEnhance, so we cannot draw any conclusion in this regard. However we can say categorically that StemEnhance does not support tumor growth.
Christian Drapeau
StemEnhance does not promote tumor growth research
More information on StemEnhance Ultra