What are you looking for?
Bioscience is on the cusp of change: cell therapy has the potential to address some important, as yet unmet needs for the treatment of certain intractable diseases, including diabetes, cirrhosis and inflammatory bowel disease.
Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common male condition characterized by a pathological inability to obtain and/or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual intercourse for more than six months. In Chinese medicine, it is called “impotence”, and the symptoms are “impotence without lifting, lifting without firmness, firmness but soon”. ED has attracted increasing attention and is recognized as a public health problem. Worldwide, approximately 150 million men suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED).
ED is closely related to age, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, depression, obesity and sedentary lifestyle. Currently, there are many pharmacological and surgical treatments for ED, among which phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i) as the first line of clinical treatment for ED, although the overall efficacy is good, with fewer adverse effects, there are still about 18% of the patients are not sensitive to it, and there is a pathologic basis for the inability to improve or cure ED. Pathologic Basis.
Stem cells not only promote vascular regeneration and nerve repair of the penile cavernous body, but also fundamentally increase the speed and volume of blood supply from the dorsal penile artery to the penile cavernous body to enhance the hardness during erection, so that they can accurately reach all the aspects affecting the mechanism of male reproduction and needing to be repaired, and carry out comprehensive repair.
In 2017, Shan et al. injected BM-MSCs into the penile corpus cavernosum of rats while combining with low-energy shock wave therapy (LESWT), and found that LESWT could aggregate stem cells in the penile corpus cavernosum tissues, and the combination of the treatment groups improved the erectile function of rats more effectively than the treatment of BM-MSCs injected into the penile corpus cavernosum alone, probably because LESWT would increase the blood flow remodeling in the corpus cavernosum, providing suitable conditions for the survival of transplanted BM-MSCs.
The study of Chen Wanmei et al. injected UDSCs into the penile cavernous tissue of nerve-damaged ED rats, and the results showed that UDSCs could significantly improve the erectile function of nerve-damaged rats by protecting the nerves, improving the endothelial function of the cavernous sinus and cavernous fibrosis, and inhibiting apoptosis.
At present, the research of UDSCs is still in the primary stage, and with the deepening of the research in the future, it is expected that they can better benefit ED patients.
A clinical research team from the Department of Urology at the Henri Mondor Teaching Hospital in Créteil, France, published an article in the trade journal Eur Urol entitled Safety of intracavernous bonemarrow-mononuclear cells for postradical prostatectomy erectile dys The clinical study entitled Safety of intracavernous bonemarrow-mononuclear cells for postradical prostatectomy erectile dysfunction: an open dose-escalation pilot study was published in the trade journal Eur Urol, reporting on a clinical study conducted in France of intracavernous bone marrow-mononuclear cells (BM-MNCs) injected intracavernously for the treatment of ED after prostatectomy in a clinical trial.
BM-MNCs are a heterogeneous population of cells including BM-MSCs, endothelial progenitor cells, and hematopoietic stem cells.The phase I trial included 12 patients divided into 4 groups, who were given intracorporeal injections of BM-MNCs at different doses (2 x 10^7, 2 x 10^8, 1 x 10^9, 2 x 10^9).The results of the phase I trial showed that the optimal dose of 1x10^9 No serious adverse events occurred within 6 months except for mild pain at the injection site, and the IEF-15 scores of the majority of patients significantly improved 6 months after injection of BM-MNCs.
Phase II included 6 patients who received the optimal dose (1x10^9 BM-MNCs) determined in Phase I and continued to follow the 12 patients in Phase I. In phase II, patients had no side effects, erectile function improved similarly to phase I. Phase I patients were followed for a mean of (62.1±11.7) months, had no prostate cancer recurrence, and had slightly lower erectile function scores than 1 year earlier.
This result suggests that intracorporeal ED injection therapy of BM-MNCs is safe and improves erectile function.
In 2016, U.S. researcher Jason A. Levy et al. published the results of a clinical study of placental mesenchymal stem cells (PM-MSCs) for the treatment of erectile dysfunction in the journal The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. A total of eight patients were enrolled in this study and were injected with PM-MSC via the cavernous body of the penis and followed up at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after injection.
Effectiveness:
1) A statistically significant increase in peak systolic flow velocity (PSV) in the penile artery was observed at 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months after injection;
2) There were no statistically significant changes in end-diastolic flow velocity (EDV), stretched penile length, penile width and IIEF-5;
3) At 6 weeks post-injection, 2 patients who had failed previous oral therapy were able to maintain an erection on their own, and at 3 months post-injection, another patient was able to have an erection on his own.
Safety:
3 patients reported irritation at the injection site, which subsided on its own after 48 hours; otherwise, no other adverse reactions occurred in all patients.
Male, age 49 years old, due to penile lifting but not firm, penile atrophy in the past two years or so, after many medical treatments, taking Chinese and western medicines are ineffective.
The patient did penile cavernous blood vessel ultrasound examination of male department on March 28, 2018, and from the examination report, it can be seen that the diameters of cavernous arterial roots on the left and right sides of Mr. Meng's penis before treatment were 0.7 and 1.0mm, and the arterial blood flow on the right side was 20cm/s for 5 minutes, 29cm/s for 10 minutes and 26cm/s for 15 minutes respectively; the arterial blood flow on the left side was 5 minutes 18cm/s, 10 minutes 29cm/s and 15 minutes 29cm/s respectively.
On the third day after the examination, Mr. Meng underwent treatment, and on June 24, after a lapse of more than two months, he went to the hospital for a review, and the examination data had a significant improvement, with the diameters of the cavernous arterial roots on the left and right sides growing to 1.0 and 1.4 mm, 0.3 and 0.4 mm thicker than before treatment, and the arterial blood flow on the right side being 5 minutes 29 cm/s, 10 minutes 34 cm/s and 15 The right arterial blood flow was 29cm/s in 5 minutes, 34cm/s in 10 minutes and 44cm/s in 15 minutes; the left arterial blood flow was 40cm/s in 5 minutes, 43cm/s in 10 minutes and 51cm/s in 15 minutes, which can be seen that compared with the pre-treatment, the blood flow increased exponentially, and the effect of the treatment was very obvious.
MSCs have immunosuppressive, anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic and angiogenesis-promoting effects, and can inhibit the onset and progression of inflammation by secreting a variety of cytokines. In other words, it can inhibit other inflammatory diseases that may affect “sexual happiness”, including prostatitis, cystitis, chronic nephritis, etc., and become the most advantageous means of treating ED caused by various reasons, especially for drug-resistant patients to bring new hope.
