What’s the deal with Michael Schumacher and his Hail Mary stem cell procedure.
Usually when we hear about celebrities getting unproven stem cells, it’s the celebrity themselves or their PR machine hyping it in exchange for something like free treatments or even money from those offering the stem cells for sale, but in the past 2 weeks the buzz over the “Formula One legend” driver Michael Schumacher (see a photo of him during his racing days below) getting a stem cell treatment for brain damage hasn’t seemed to have come from his circle. The source isn’t entirely clear. Even so, this story has generated a remarkable amount of buzz and hype.
Unfortunately, I don’t see Michael Schumacher having any reasonable chance of benefiting in any way from the “stem cells” or the story. What’s going on here? Was he even given stem cells? He had a catastrophic skiing accident in 2013 that caused severe brain damage.
The French paper Le Parisien first reported that Schumacher was getting some kind of stem cell treatment.
UK tabloids then have been reporting on this story like the stem cell “treatment” involved could really help. You see a screenshot below of the types of headlines that popped up on Google News.
The phrases in the headlines are over the top in my view such as “Michael Schumacher could be able to “cry at stories” and “move his thumbs”.
Really?
The Daily Star coverage starts like this,
“On Monday, he was taken to the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, where he will be given cutting-edge stem-cell treatment. He is set to be treated at the state-of-the-art facility by Professor Philippe Menasche, a top surgeon specialising in stem-cell breakthroughs. Schumacher has been in a coma since his accident in 2013 when he suffered catastrophic head injuries.”
Who exactly specializes in “stem cell breakthroughs”? I guess we can’t expect much balance from tabloids, right?
What kind of stem cells (if any) might be involved here and how would they be used?
I reached out to Dr. Menasche by email and got this reply:
“Thank you for your mail. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is a very strong willingness of the family not to provide any information and you will understand that although I miss sharing scientific data with colleagues, I currently have to comply with the family’s commitment to confidentiality. For your information, should this leak had not occurred, I had planned to publish an “anonymous” case report describing the whole procedure but, unfortunately, it is, at least currently, no longer possible.”
He felt unable to even mention any technical details of the product or methods used. Medical privacy issues are of course very important.
I tried to learn more about Menasche’s research. He appears to be a surgeon at the University of Paris. I see some recent interesting publications on stem cells from him, but related to the heart, not the brain. That seems somewhat concerning given that Schumacher had brain and not heart damage.
After skimming through some of the tabloid stories, at first my best guess was that Menasche’s team somehow infused MSCs systemically into Schumacher (or possibly directly into his brain) based on the idea that it might reduce chronic brain inflammation to aid his recovery from severe brain damage.
However, it appears that instead maybe the famous F1 driver received something like experimental preps of stem cell exosomes or some unproven secretome kind of product based on this quote further down in the Daily Star article referenced above:
“Le Parisien said the F1 legend had been injected with secretome, called “stem-cell juice” by Professor Menashe, which is more commonly used to repair the heart.”
I’m not sure how a stem cell secretome injection could help brain damage either. One recent high-profile paper did argue for a potential role of stem cell exosomes in the brain in aging, but it was very preliminary.
We need clinical trial data for this kind of thing more broadly. Compassionate use options for individual severe cases may be warranted depending on the context.
So overall I’d grade this media coverage as more hype than hope unfortunately. On the little we know, it seems like very long odds that the race driver could benefit medically either.
My best wishes to Michael Schumacher and his family. It’s understandable for patients and families to be looking for hope, especially in a tragic situation.
I hope the family wasn’t given the wrong idea by the medical/research team about the odds here of any benefit and potential risks so they could make an informed decision.
I’m sorry, and I surely, surely hope I’m
wrong…after reading articles upon articles…I never got a POSITIVE note
from the articles written from the professionals of either field…just
mere uncertainty .
again I surely surely hope I am wrong
that the 7 time F1 champion/ LEGEND is not à test subject….
Using lithium in addition to stem cells have show incredible promise in nerve regeneration. Not sure if that is what is going on, but my initial theory at hte beginning of this all was that they were using fetal stem cells to help his brain tissue recover. Why he doesnt “have access to his memory”. it can create new brain tissue, but not recreate his personality or memories. Now with this relatively new discovery about lithium, i would say they are using htat in addition to the stems cells, from whatever source they came from.
Henry, you are quite correct. Mesenchymal stem cells sectretion of “condition medium” with Lamotrigine taken orally digest and diffuse into blood stream at the small intestine, have that known repair to brain and nerve damage.
Admin:
In your response to Kathy, you are making a common, careless, misleading oversimplification of the properties of “pluripotent stem cells.” In the medium of reference, in vitro, neither human embryonic stem cells nor human induced pluripotent stem cells have been demonstrated to “become any other cell type.” Both of these unnatural pluripotent cell types, produced by technical manipulations, are now well-known to fall notoriously short of producing many postnatal types of cells that naturally reside in the mature human body.
Not really. I think with the right media and conditions, just about any cell type is possible from these cells.
We still have a lot to learn.
Since stem cells become whatever you need most, I find it amazing that you do not grasp this basic tenet!
No, only pluripotent stem cells can become any other cell type. Plus even these special cells don’t just somehow “know” what a patient needs most.