Peter Nygard and SCNT

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

Peter Nygard is a Finnish-born Canadian fashion designer, worth $800 million, who Jarjar mentioned has convinced the Bahamian government to change their laws and allow EMBRYONIC stem cell treatment to be provided at clinics in their country.

What Nygard is doing is a bit different from AAPE. Nygard, to my knowledge is not using or selling any Adipose-Derived Stem Cells or AAPE extract. Nygard is doing something with embryonic stem cells which is definitely not legal in the US.

Nygard is funding a clinic to provide custom Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) stem cell therapy to himself and patients who come to his clinic in the Bahamas.

SCNT is basically making a clone of yourself, but instead of letting the clone grow into a human, you culture the cells into something like a zygote or blastocyst, and then extract EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS from it. These embryonic stem cells contain all your own DNA, and they are stem cells, so if injected into your body, they could (potentially) regenerate your tissues and organs.

The way it works is, a somatic (body) cell is taken from the patient, and its nucleus (with a copy of all the patient’s DNA) is removed. Then a human ovum (egg cell from a female’s uterus) has its nucleus removed, and the patient’s nucleus is put inside the ovum. (The human ova are actually discarded cells from In Vitro Fertilization treatments done at IVF clinics for women.) The ovum “reprograms” or “resets” the DNA in the patient’s nucleus to start generating pluripotent embryonic stem cells, which if a real embryo were allowed to develop, would migrate to different parts of the body and, through cell signaling and positioning, start generating the developing organs and tissues.

Then this ovum is shocked so that it starts dividing (by mitosis) and turns into a ball of cells – the first step to becoming a cloned organism. When the ball of cells gets big enough, it starts generating human stem cells inside of it (which have all the DNA from the original patient). These are embryonic stem cells, not adipose-derived stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are probably the most “powerful” stem cells because they are completely pluripotent, haven’t differentiated at all, and can potentially recreate any organ – with the right positioning and chemical signaling.

Peter Nygard is 70 years old. He still has most of his hair (although it’s gray), so he’s not doing this primarily to get his hair back. He’s doing this to regenerate his muscles, rejuvenate his bodily organs, and to “look younger”.

So when Jarjar says that Nygard is doing exactly what the Korean doctors are doing with Adipose-Derived Stem Cells, he’s not. He’s even going a step further, by having cloned embryonic stem cells with his own DNA injected into his body, which by the way is completely illegal in the US, EU and all other developed Western countries. (I’m not making a value judgment about that here, I’m just stating a fact to show the contrast between SCNT and AAPE. The latter is apparently lawful in more countries and even apparently being done now by various clinics in the US, although whether that will pass FDA scrutiny and where it actually stands with the FDA right now, I don’t know. I think there are probably serious moves going on at the FDA right now to restrict or ban it, but I think the regulations applying to AAPE in the US at the moment are somewhat ambiguous.)

Nygard also claims he’s going to build clinics to offer this SCNT treatment in Macau, Thailand, and other countries.

As I see this, the treatment would be extremely expensive, because you have to buy the discarded IVF ova from an IVF clinic, and then even with those ova, only a small percentage of them can be successfully injected with a patient’s nucleus and be cloned. Apparently the success rate is very low, in some cases around 1%. The process is highly labor intensive and not efficient, and cannot be automated.

Here’s a video on what Peter Nygard is doing in the Bahamas…

Here’s an article on nuclear reprogramming and stem cell creation:

http://www.pnas.org/content/100/suppl_1/11819.full.pdf

One option: See if Mr. Nygard would be interested in opening a “hair practice” at his clinic, which would provide AAPE and even perhaps SCNT therapy, injected into the scalp, to those who could afford it. This way, a completely new clinic would not have to be built, the new Bahamian law could be used, and doctors from around the world who are interested in this field of clinical research (like Dr. Nigam) could participate. Just a thought…

2

that was a great video thanks for posting

3

To open a clinic in The Bahamas one would not have to build a clinic, one could rent a small house and use it for a clinic. In Mexico I went to a clinic that was a rented house with the rooms turned into clinic offices, such as file room, and procedure room, etc. You could do this with a 2 or 3 bedroom rented house if you would basically just be doing AAPE injections.

4

I remember when we were in Bahia Kino, Mexico and my brother got stung by a stingray and we took him to the doctor’s clinic at the beachfront town. The clinic was one room and against one wall was shelves that had files in it, and against another wall was all the stuff the doctor might need to perform his job. The other wall had a window and more stuff against the wall on either side of the window. There was a procedure chair of some type in the middle of the room. He had my brother sit on the procedure chair and then he pulled out the stinger and we paid him like $50 and we left.

Again, this was a one room clinic. It looked like it might have been a leased office that was set-up to make minor medical stuff possible.

A set-up like this would not cost much to get off the ground. Or like I said we could also do the same thing in a rented house with multiple rooms if we needed multiple rooms but I don’t see a reason why we would need multiple rooms.

5

Why would you want to use a ramshackle rented house when you can put it in a beautiful, comfortable high tech clinic like the one Nygard is building? You want to give patients a sense of confidence, not scare them away with a Third World shack. Plus the Bahamas government would probably not license a home as a medical clinic. They would have certain health, inspection and licensing requirements and insist in clean laboratory and treatment facilities. Believe me, they are going to insist on some pretty high standards.

If Nygard has everything in place, or will soon, why reinvent the wheel?

6

What if Nygard won’t do it at his facility? Remember he has a full head of hair so might feel no sympathy for bald people so he might not be agreeable to renting an office out for hair efforts at his facility.

I wasn’t thinking of renting like a condemned building or anything like that. The place would have to be neat and clean and structurally sound. But it could be a leased office with just a few rooms. It wouldn’t need a bunch of medical stuff because all we would be doing there is drawing out fat cells to send to the Korean company and then later injecting the AAPE into patients. This would not have to be expensive.

7

I think Nygard will do it at his facility, once he realizes there is a substantial amount of money in it. Remember, this is a guy who is motivated to help people look good, he’s a multi-millionaire fashion designer.

8

Well, of course if he could be persuaded to rent space at his facility and allow AAPE (and perhaps hair transplants and even some hair cell research) to be done at his place then by all means it would be best to use his facility. Who’s going to talk with him about leasing out space? I can’t reach him. Also, we don’t want to overreach. We want to be sure we don’t start out too large. We should start out with a few offices at his clinic and then enlarge as we get more and more business.

Also, we should keep the idea of renting an office not associated with Nygard on the back-burner as a plan b in case Nygard won’t work with hair efforts.

Here’s a clinic the American actor Danny Glover went to in the Caribbean. Notice that it looks like it’s about the size of an upper-middle class home.

I have seen pictures of Caribbean stem cell clinics that are even smaller. Much smaller. They look like one or two room offices and that is really all we would need to rent. And we would not need to buy a lot of expensive medical equipment because we would only be doing AAPE and perhaps hair transplants at the site and maybe some hair cell therapy experiments, but commercializing breakthrough hair cell-based therapies is years down the road because they still need to solve some technical problems, whereas AAPE could be done NOW.

9

I wonder if these folks might be willing to offer AAPE:

http://www.roatan-realestate.com/garm-medical-clinic/

But they actually do look a little pricey. We do not want to rent space at an expensive building. We would want an adequate satisfactory working environment. That would keep costs down, especially in the beginning.

10

Very interesting idea. We might have a better chance with him than waiting for clinical trials the traditional way, I have no problem going to the Bahamas for treatment.

11

Nygard sounds like a good idea perhaps but remember that he is heavily involved in embryonic stem cell research and he might not want to get side-tracked over hair loss.

He has a full head of hair and likely feels no sympathy for hair loss sufferers.

He’s involved in embryonic stem cell research because he’s an elderly man who’s trying to reverse his own aging process. This means that he’s interested in scientific pursuits that can cure him of his own ailments. Since he’s not dealing with hair loss he may not care to get involved with treating hair loss.

All that having been said, I still think we should try talking with him about AAPE. Even if he isn’t interested in having his doctors getting involved with AAPE he still might be willing to rent space at his facility to a doctor we would select to perform AAPE treatments. So yes, let’s contact Nygard if someone knows how to do so.

12

If that treatment is supposed to make him look younger, it doesn’t work. He still looks like a 70-year-old man.

13

The same as hair cell therapy is not ready for prime-time, neither is embryonic stem cell anti-aging therapy. But they will work all of those bugs out and as soon as they do he is ready to take advantage of it, if he’s still alive when they work out the remaining bugs. I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing because he’s advancing the research and once it actually works he will release it a lot quicker than other places because of FDA type regulations.

14

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by News[/postedby]
If that treatment is supposed to make him look younger, it doesn’t work. He still looks like a 70-year-old man.[/quote]

Yes,but he’s super rich with plenty of yes men around him,more or likely.

I think this is a non-starter,who’s going to contact him???

15

I don’t think any of us are able to contact him.

16

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
I don’t think any of us are able to contact him.[/quote]

You’re right there, as the Nygard Biotech website isn’t finished yet, and there’s no contract information:

http://www.nygardbiotech.com/directions/

If we’re going to pursue this in any way, the first question I would want answered is, what are the requirements for a foreign doctor to practice in the Bahamas?

17

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
I don’t think any of us are able to contact him.

[postedby]Originally Posted by roger_that[/postedby]

You’re right there, as the Nygard Biotech website isn’t finished yet, and there’s no contract information:

http://www.nygardbiotech.com/directions/

If we’re going to pursue this in any way, the first question I would want answered is, what are the requirements for a foreign doctor to practice in the Bahamas?[/quote]

Of course that information would be necessary. I’m sure that foreign practitioners can function in The Bahamas because Nygard brought in his own medical/scientific staff.

18

You’re much better off finding an existing doctor or clinic in the bahamas. My guess is there are quite a few “clinics for hire” that will run trials for you. These clinics business is to run third party trials for other people… so you would have to pay them to do this.

The next option is to find a doc with a clinic who you can talk into doing this… figure out what kind of equipment you’d need (tally the cost) and email him all the details and research (make it easy for him) and then also tell him that you have 10,20,30 people willing to fly down and try it.

19

Guys, if you’re serious why don’t you take ten minutes and google this instead of assuming your only option is to some how get ahold of a billionaire or transport Dr. nigam…

Below is 3 minutes on google:

List of stemcell facilites: http://www.vaultstemcell.com/treatmentcenters/

http://www.cellr4.org/article/695

Strengthening of the Research Infrastructure

In developing countries one of the greatest challenges to the establishment of internationally recognized scientific research is the dearth of local suitable professionals to serve as the local “backbone” upon which to build. The Bahamas is very fortunate in this regard because of the cadre of a wide cross section of well qualified professionals with basic research experiences and international exposures. Although this is a meaningful asset for the local research infrastructure upon which to build strengthening of all aspects of the research environment in quantity and quality of personnel must now be a continuous process to ensure cutting edge status. To this end local experts welcome international experts as solo or interdependent professional partners to meet the need to ensure the necessary skill sets are available, developed and maintained to keep the Bahamas as a priority choice in the healthcare industry for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine moving forward.

Conference Panel Discussions

Medical Industry Start-Ups in the Bahamas
Bahamas Stem Cell Research and Therapy Act

Register Now!

STEMSO Presenters

Paolo Macchiarini, M.D., Ph.D. Click here for Bio
Director, European Airway Institute and Advanced Center of Translational Regenerative Medicine
Professor of Regenerative Surgery, Karolinska Institutet

Amit N. Patel, M.D., B.S., M.S. Click here for Bio
Director, Clinical Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering
University of Utah

Mark J. Holterman, M.D., Ph.D. Click here for Bio
Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics
Chief of Pediatric Surgery, University of Illinois College of Medicine

Neil Riordan, Ph.D. Click here for Bio
Medistem Panama, Inc., Founder and Chairman
Clinical Trials in Panama using Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells:
Spinal Cord Injury, Autoimmune Disorders, and Osteoarthritis

Leslie Miller, M.D., FACC Click here for Bio
Chief Science Officer, Okyanos Heart Institute

Camillo Ricordi, M.D. Click here for Bio
Stacy Joy Goodman Professor of Surgery
Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Microbiology and Immunology
Director, Cell Transplant Center and Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami

Adeeb Al-Zoubi, M.D., Ph.D. Click here for Bio
CEO, Stem Cells of Arabia, Amman, Jordan
Clinical Associate Professor, University of Illinois College of Medicine

The Honorable Dr. Michael Darville Click here for Bio
Minister of Grand Bahama

The Honorable Dr. Perry Gomez Click here for Bio
Minister of Health of Grand Bahama

Bellur Prabhakar, Ph.D. Click here for Bio
Chief Scientific Officer
Mariam Medical

Mary Ann Chirba, J.D., D.Sc., M.P.H. Click here for Bio
Professor
Boston College School of Law

Howard T. Walpole Jr., M.D., MBA, FACC, FSCAI Click here for Bio
Chief Medical Officer, Okyanos Heart Institute

Allan Y. Wu, M.D., CTBS, FACOG, FAACS, FACS Click here for Bio
Chief Scientific Officer, The Morrow Institute

Andrew Ittleman, Esq., C.A.M.S. Click here for Bio
Fuerst, Ittleman, David & Joseph

R. Wade McKenna, D.O. Click here for Bio
Chief Medical Director, Biologic Therapies
The McKenna Institute of Orthopedic Surgery & Orthobiologics

Jaroslav Michalek, M.D., Ph.D Click here for Bio
President, The International Consortium for Cellular Therapy and Immunology

Scott Edelstein, Esq. Click here for Bio
Partner and Co-Chair, Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry Group
Squire Sanders LLP

Dr. Glen S. Beneby, FRCA Click here for Bio
Medical Advisor, Public Hospitals Authority

Craig Cady, Ph.D Click here for Bio
Director, Stem Cell Research Laboratory, Bradley University

Douglas Hammond Click here for Bio
President, STEMSO

Ian Rolle Click here for Bio
President, Port Authority of Grand Bahama

Arthur K. Parris, Jr., Of Counsel Click here for Bio
Parris Whittaker

20

Needhairasap, you’re right. I’ve been doing this research too, there are a lot of people we can contact. I suggest Okyanos – a well organized stem cell clinic open in the Bahamas.

Nygard is having big problems finding a place for his clinic. He has a mansion on a small island and wanted to build the clinic in his house, but a local community group blocked it. He’s still looking for locations. His project is moving very slowly.