Still wrought with issues and ethical concerns, stem cell therapy for pets are now being funded for research, paving the way for this type of treatment to be accessible to your pet dogs and cats in the future.
Chicago Tribune recently reported a group called "Winn Foundation" that is funding research on stem cell therapy for pets, particularly treating some diseases in cats.
Holding a symposium recently, the group reportedly discussed stem cell therapy for pets and how it could help treat cats suffering from gastrointestinal problems.
"In human medicine, there's much that is misunderstood (regarding stem cells). In veterinary medicine, we use adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells, taken from fat," stem cell therapy for pets proponent Dr. Craig Webb explained in the report.
He added, "Who can't lose a little fat? There's no connection with embryonic stem cells, which years ago caused all the controversy on the human side."
According to Petrib.com, gastrointestinal disorders such as gastric dilatation are among the causes of deaths among pets. This makes stem cell therapy for pet cats and dogs a necessary treatment nowadays.
Stem cell therapy, which is now being used for humans despite ethical issues, is a treatment that generates stem cells to transform into becoming any cell type in the body system. These cells thereby prevent diseases and other disorders.
"The clients spend all this money to put a diagnosis on the cat that we really don't understand," Dr. Craig Webb further noted. "That's what idiophatic means; the cause and disease itself are pretty much a mystery."
One pet disease called the Crohn's disease is reportedly now being treated using stem cell therapy for pets, showing "promising results."
"Our first goal was to determine that stem cell therapy would be safe in cats and naturally, we wanted to help these cats," Dr. Craig Webb added in the report.
