How Future Stem Cell Technology Will Allow People With Closed Growth Plates To Grow Taller
Recently one of the regular readers to the website, who calls himself Ankit. We almost never reveal last names on this website to keep the identities of our readers, and contributors anonymous. Ankit stated that he has been reading ours website for 2 years now, and wanted to congratulate us on our work. Well, we wanted to thank Ankit but would like to point out that technically this website has not been around for 2 years. I only started writing for the website back in June or July of 2012.
His major question was to ask us about contacting this Russian Stem Cell researcher named Alexander Teplyashin. The name did sound familiar and I think that this guy was someone I wrote about in a previous post “Great News For Stem Cell Method For Height Increase! :)”. We chose not to try to get in contact with this guy since he seems to be a sort of a controversial figure in Russia. We also believed that no matter how many times we emailed him or his secretary, they would not respond. The website (StemCellRussia.com) seems to not reveal a lot of information. However, there have been at least one person who has messaged them and got a response. At the moment, certain pages on the website do not load up.
Given the recent news about how the current Russian president Putin is about to sent Russian Forces into the Crimea and Ukraine to control the uprisings, we suspect that anyone who is going to try to meet this Teplyashin guy to get stem cell research done on themselves to grow taller will be extremely disappointed. Russia has always been a sort of unstable nation with a violent history for the last century or so. How much is the story coming out of Russia actually based on facts and reality and how much is just exaggerations and lies?
We decided to google this guy’s name into Google, Alexander Teplyashin to see what is said about him. The first result was found was an article written in a well respected medical research journal, The Lancet. The article was entitled “Russian scientists voice concern over “stem-cell cosmetics””.
So who is this guy?
It seems that this guy Alexander has been linked to not just claims made by stem cell providers about using the technology to grow taller, but also to stop the process of aging. Some of the claims that he makes include….
- Curing Alzheimers
- Curing Parkinson’s
- Stop Aging
- Remove all diseases
- Hepatitis
- Eye Disorders
- Skin Problems
Most sources and internet results reveal that Alexander Teplyashin was head of the Beauty Clinic Plaza, which is located in Moscow. We would learn later that the Beauty Clinic Plaza is not some type of single stand alone office, but is actually the name of a chain of beauty clinics and salons (The only source we did find suggested that there was 2 locations, in Moscow and on the elite Rublyovskoye Shosse) This guy was the director for the chain, not one single clinic or institute. He supposedly had an assistant named Ekaterina Kulneva with her email at scelltimes@gmail.com. The website that has all this information was www.stemcellrussia.com. He supposed also had a wife named Dr. Nata Toptchiachvili. It turns out that they are quite rich. He is described back in 2005 to have thinning grey-black hair and single, well defined crease over his forehead.
Maybe a decade ago, there was a lot of controversy over this guy since he was believed to have been connected to a discovery that barrels of fetuses where found somewhere close to the Ural Mountains.
In addition, there are sources which say that this Dr. Alexander Teplyashin guy was the president of “Pyramids” Clinic network, as well as the director of the Institute of Stem Cell Research.
The exact location for the clinic (or more accurately clinics, if it was indeed a chain of beauty salons/clinics) is described to be in the center of the capital. The building has been described as being “an immaculate building with frosted glass doors, chrome fittings, and a spiral staircase”
We found out that he has a patent for artificial stem cell implant “Method for obtaining mesenchymal stem cells”. The IPEXL database shows that while there are 3 results for this Russian researcher, the 3 results all show one patent title. The time frame was from 2005-2007.
Part of the Abstract is below (To get the full Patent PDF, Click Here)
“…obtain mesenchymal stem cells from human tissue with high homogeneity of the cell suspension, since the used method for obtaining mesenchymal stem cells from human tissue comprises the crushing and enzymatical treatment of the tissue with collagenase solution in Eagle medium in the Dulbecco modification, removal of erythrocytes by the aid of the lysis solution and subsequent filtration of the prepared suspension; as human tissue fat tissue or decidual or amniotic placenta membrane or chorion placenta stroma is used, whereas the filtration is performed sequentially by the use of filters comprising a pore size of 100 μm and 10 μm. In the enzymatical treatment of the fat tissue, of the decidual or amniotic placenta membrane collagenase of the type I is used, and in the enzymatical treatment of the chorion placenta stroma collagenase of the type IV is used.”
The idea for extracting MSCs from human fat does make sense. After a plastic surgeon plugs the hose into the area of fat in a plastic surgery patient, the fat is sucked often into buckets which is often dumped. The fat can however be chemically converted into other uses. (Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club took the fat removed and using some basic chemical principles turned the fat into soap.) You want to use some type of collagenase enzyme to dissolve/break down the collagen, which makes up most of the fat. You have to remove the red blood cells, which are the erythrocytes. That is done using a lysis solution. You are still left with suspensions of fat suspension (which are often emulsion combinations) which are removed through a series of filters, which I would guess is just using the principle of various densities and spinning the resulting solutions in the lab centrifuge so that the different materials separate out due to their different densities (basic introductory chemistry lab idea). Overall, this patent makes sense.
There was also another source which was a study entitled “Characterization of human MSC-like cells isolated from bone marrow, adipose tissue, skin and placenta” where he was cited as an author.
The laws based in Russia suggest that apparently you are allowed to extract out stem cells and even stored it, but you can’t used the stem cells in any way, whether for medical or cosmetic applications. The law was implemented by a group of 13 scientists back in 2003-2004 which only stated that stem cell researchers can not use stem cells taken from “fetuses and embryos” since it was unethical based on the source of the embryo. Based on the way other people have interpreted these russian laws, they believe the law states that “clinical application of fetal, embryonic, or adult stem cells is illegal”. Somehow people like Alexander has found legal and semantics loopholes to show that what they are doing, combining the stem cell research with viable commercial use is not technically illegal. The area is still very vague and the people who want to use the stem cells for cosmetic application use the vagueness of the russian laws to their advantage to run those types of “Beauty Clinics”.
The problem with using stem cells is that for the first decade after the discovery of stem cells, most researchers only knew how to extract them from embryos that were still in development, very young new born babies, the umbilical cord, or aborted fetuses. This caused a lot of medical ethical problems. The way that Teplyashin has been able to get around this medical ethical dilemma has been to use stem cells only taken from adults. It seems that Dr. Alexander Teplyashin, who has been offering therapies in Russia with adult stem cells get the stem cells from adult’s bone marrow and fat. The patent that he is associated with does agree with his claims though.
After careful analysis of the patent, it does indeed show that he proposed the idea of using certain filtration methods to separate the mesenchymal stem cells found from adipose tissue (Fat tissue). We would learn later that the adipose tissue is from liposuction. The little bit of stem cells they could isolate, they would cultivate and stored after filtering the right types of cells out from the fat tissue. This we would learn would be the source of the stem cells, fat tissue which had been removed from women and men who had gone in for fat tissue removal.
What about the part about his proposed technique to make people grow taller?
The original claim was that through injections of extracted and stored stem cells into bone, you would be able to increase your height by as much as 2.5 cms in one month. The patient would even be able to walk after the injections. Of course the rate of bone lengthening was from guesses done before any type of clinical testing. In the beginning, we suspected that there was never any clinical tests done.
It would take the bones 3 months to regenerate (whatever that means). After the 3 months, the bones would lengthen by 8-10 cms. If we were to take a stab at what it means for the bones to regenerate, we believe that the 3 month time line actually refers to when the porous implant would completely dissolve and the stem cells inside would differentiate into the bone material that is surrounding it.
What happens is that the stem cells are first placed into a type of porous material. The porous implant is placed in the space where there is a bone defect/fracture/distraction/break. Over time, the porous implant which is biodegradable dissolves. What is left is the stem cells, which differentiate into the right type of cells to expand the spacing of the bone break.
This method seems to have never been tested in a real medical setting. It was NOT a clinical procedure. It was done only in private clinics and beauty salons.
However, there are also contradictory information we’ve found and read which says that there was indeed at least 1 experiment done at the Cell Technology Center at Russia’s Veterinary Academy on sheep. About 100 sheep had the porous implant placed into their hind legs. We are not sure what to believe.
What is our final opinion?
After reviewing over the science based on just 1st impressions, the method does make sense. From a theoretical point of view, the idea/technique that is claimed could work. If the study with the hind legs of sheep have already been done and we can find evidence in some russian scientific journal, then the technique is valid.
We have read enough studies from PubMed and researchers and experimenters trying out tissue engineering and stem cells to reveal that the idea is theoretically valid. If we were going to take a guess at how future stem cell technology would work to help make people with closed growth plates grow taller, it would most likely be this method as described by Alexander. The problem is that this guy is so controversial. The story of his connection with barrels of fetuses discovered in the Ural Mountains is quite disturbing.
