Reprimand, $13K fine for bone marrow stem cell clinic doc

Dr. Matthew Thorson bone marrow stem cells
Dr. Matthew Thorson, a pain doc who received a reprimand from a Minnesota State Medical Board related to his offerings of unproven bone marrow stem cell offerings. Photo from clinic website.

A Minnesota doctor running a stem cell clinic offering bone marrow injections for a variety of health conditions was subject to action by state medical regulators. The Star Tribune’s reporter Jeremy Olson has a new article on the action, which included a $13K+ fine.

Olson’s piece has some of the key details:

“Dr. Matthew Thorson was reprimanded late last year after the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice received complaints that his Stem Cell Centers of Minnesota practice made marketing claims that haven’t been proved in research and paid recruiters per patient they steered to his clinic.”

This sounds all too familiar for the stem cell clinic arena, but it’s more unusual for a bone marrow clinic to get dinged in this way. Fat stem cell and birth-related clinics and suppliers have been subject to most action. Olson’s article included some explanation from Thorson on what happened:

“In an interview, Thorson acknowledged marketing mistakes by an agency that he no longer employs, but said the stem-cell injections and other forms of regenerative medicine he offers are at least safe. They also have reduced pain, increased mobility and prevented or delayed surgery for many of his patients, he said, even if medical research on those benefits is limited.”

That doesn’t sound very convincing to me.

The action by the Minnesota Board against Thorson lists a number of concerning issues. There were reportedly six complaints filed against Thorson in less than a two-year period.

What does the FDA think of bone marrow stem cell clinics?

The FDA has been slower to clarify its rules related to clinic use of bone marrow-related products. While such products seem to not trigger the FDA’s “more than minimal manipulation” standard for drug classification and often are not necessarily defined from the get-go as drugs, it sure seems like many clinics are conducting non-homologous use procedures using bone marrow products, which in theory should trigger a drug classification as well I would think.

However, the agency has been vague about the extent to which non-homologous use applies to bone marrow products. For instance, if you inject bone marrow cells into somebody’s eyes or nervous system, which clearly seems like non-homologous use to me, is the product a drug in that case?

Bigger clinic problem across U.S.

The total number of American stem cell clinics remains in flux. Long-time stem cell clinic critic Leigh Turner is quoted in the article that he hasn’t so far seen much drop in clinic numbers since the FDA stepped up actions in the last couple years:

“You might sort of think, ‘OK, this is a market that is going to shrink now that authorities have caught on.’ Instead I’m seeing the opposite,” said Leigh Turner, a University of Minnesota bioethicist, whose 2016 report on the market for unapproved stem-cell treatments spurred federal regulators into action. “It doesn’t seem to be having any kind of significant effect on the marketplace as a whole.”

My recent study found that some types of clinics appear to be particularly prone to shutting down, rebooting as some other business, or stopping marketing of stem cells. However, so many new clinics are opening up that along with clinic operators rebooting under new firm names, it’s hard to keep track.

In Minnesota alone there are many clinics:

“As many as 13 clinics in Minnesota and hundreds nationally provide therapies that pledge to use the regenerative qualities of stem cells, even though the therapies haven’t gone through the same rigorous federal approval as prescription drugs.

Minnesota’s providers range from independent practitioners such as Thorson to the Rejuv clinics in Savage and St. Cloud that partner with Regenexx, a Des Moines-based national stem-cell company. Mayo Clinic and Twin Cities Orthopedics (TCO) have gotten into the market as well.”

What is Mayo Clinic doing in the mix here?

That last part in the article about the Mayo Clinic is also concerning to me and to others in the field. Mayo’s own study didn’t find a significant benefit from stem cell injections for knees, but they apparently still market it anyway for some unknown reason:

“Mayo sought proof of effectiveness through a randomized clinical trial — giving arthritic patients stem-cell injections in one knee and non-medicating saline injections in the other. Neither doctors nor patients knew which knees received the stem cells. The trial failed to prove effectiveness because patients saw equal levels of improvement in both knees.

Even so, Mayo still offers the therapy, which is probably suitable for middle-aged adults who won’t benefit from physical therapy alone but aren’t ready for joint replacement yet, said Dr. Shane Shapiro, medical director for Mayo’s regenerative medicine program at its Jacksonville, Fla., campus.

“We try and counsel patients on the best treatment options,” he said. “We really don’t push these treatment options at all.”

So why offer it at all at this point and charge for it? I wish they wouldn’t unless they have a study that is more convincing first.

Unfortunately, some clinics point to Mayo being in this space as justification for what they are doing.

The bigger picture

It’s clearly getting riskier for stem cell clinics and their suppliers the last few years. They are increasingly likely to be subject to actions by state or federal regulators. This is only likely to increase in November when the FDA’s 3-year grace period of a sort ends.

The bottom line though is that it’s not clear if all these state and federal actions are going to make a meaningful dent in the massive marketing of unproven stem cells in the U.S. Some kind of more assertive action seems necessary by regulators in the most extreme cases where, for example, the product in question is clearly a drug and has harmed patients.

12 thoughts on “Reprimand, $13K fine for bone marrow stem cell clinic doc”

  1. Well thank you all for your interest in my reprimand by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. There are actually a lot of details that none of you know that I would like a chance to address.

    So yes I am in interventional pain physician and have been practicing for about 13 years. I do all of the standard types of injections using steroids, radiofrequency ablations, minimally invasive spine procedures, spinal cord stimulation systems and peripheral nerve stimulation systems. I also do medical management, medical cannabis certifications and regenerative medicine. I was one of the first physicians to inject Human Amniotic Fluid Allograft into joints and eventually for use in epidurals and facet joints of the spine back in 2013. When I first started my practice we also did some morphine pump implants as well. The pump we used was from Flowonix. This pump did not have a recall on it like the Medtronic pump, so we felt it was a safer product. The issue with it though, is it did not offer a patient controlled bolus option, so we then had to figure out what to do for acute breakthrough pain. At a roundtable discussion involving this pump at a meeting in Dallas, that was put on by Flowonix, I asked about the use of Subsys for this very issue, and the majority of the roundtable involving about 20 physicians thought it would be an ok idea, because these patients were opioid tolerant and you could still avoid pills and bypass, for the most part, the GI tract. Therefore I put my pump patients on Subsys and a few cancer patients as well. Overall my clinic had a total of no more than 30 patients on the Subsys medication. We had no negative issues with the use of it, beyond the media that it created years later. Obviously if I had known about the ethics of the Insys Corporation, I would have never done any business with them, hindsight though is 20:20.

    As far as my regenerative practice, like I said I was the first in the state to incorporate the use of Human Amniotic Fluid Allograft in injections, this then has progressed to the use of Prolotherapy, Bone Marrow, Platelet Rich Plasma, and Exosomes. We are actually completing an IRB research study on Low Back Pain and the use of Human Amniotic Fluid Allograft (disc herniations, spinal stenosis, and disc degeneration) We have shown 70% success with disc herniations. This has been presented at the Gabor Ratz World Pain Conference where it won best new paper, also most recently at the Evolve RegenMed Conference in Salt Lake City.

    The main problem the Board had was with the marketing company that I hired for the Regenerative Medicine program, whom we are no longer affiliated with. They didn’t take much of a stance on the Subsys issue, in fact I helped the Attorney General’s office in bringing suit against Insys and its executives.

    I have a more rigorous informed consent process than ever before and we produce all of our own marketing. I have never had a negative outcome from my conventional or regenerative practice. We maintain high ethical standards when it comes to medical management using opioids and we are always searching for new products or medications, or procedures to benefit patients.

    My governing body, the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians ASIPP) has actually taken the lead in promoting the use of Regenerative Products and now in our current pandemic are asking the FDA to loosen the regulations and payers to cover the use of Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells and MSC Exosomes for treatment on ARDS secondary to COVID19 infections. There is evidence that it can calm the Cytokine storm that occurs. Japan has endorsed the use of Exosomes for treatment in Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.

    So yes, I have a reprimand, I don’t necessarily agree with most it, but the process of fighting the medical board is insanely expensive. I did make some mistakes which we have corrected and I think are a better clinic as a result.

    I never imagined that a field of medicine would become so controversial or that there would be these MD vs PhD rifts that have been created. Regenerative Medicine is not going anywhere, I think we should all embrace it and help it to flourish rather than cut each other down for personal or pseudo-personal gain.

    1. Hi Matthew,
      You said, “There is evidence that it [exosomes] can calm the Cytokine storm that occurs.”
      Can you point me to any of this evidence, clinical or preclinical, in any models of exosomes in viral pneumonia or ARDS? I searched but could not find any efficacy data anywhere. Thanks.

  2. Without question SUBSY bought him to the attention of the board. Many of the MDs that did seminars for them are now in jail as well as the owner of the co on his way to jail. Also he was promoting the treatment of COPD and neuropathy with BMAC.

  3. Francisco Prieto MD

    The thing that really surprised me here was seeing that the Mayo clinic is offering (and presumably charging for) a treatment that their own study indicates is no better than a saline injection. You have to wonder what the informed consent is: “We’d like to inject your knee with a cell product that may have unknown long term effects and our studies show is just as good as injecting you with saline, is that OK?” That sort of triumph of hope over scientific evidence might have been understandable in 1889, but is hard to stomach in 2020.

    1. could you please cite the reference of the Mayo Clinic study so that I could read the report, is it available on the NIH PubMed web site ?

  4. There would be ZERO fine for a doctor with marketing complaints. They would ask him/her to fix it. He was brought up because of his association with Subsys plain and simple. Stem Cell Centers of MN was a DBA. He is a practicing pain management doctor. Maybe you should do a little more homework before grabbing to any straw that says anything negative about Regen Med and how it should be outlawed by the FDA. If he had hurt/injured someone it would have been listed. NOPE wasn’t there. Your crusade is actually having a reverse effect.. more and more people want these services. Try a different approach

    1. Dr. Knoepfler has done more homework than most in the field of stem cells and ‘regenerative medicine’. He’s widely acknowledged among the scientific societies, well published, and he’s more than earned his roll as an advocate against unproven, untested (and often illegal) stem cell ‘therapies’. Dr. Knoepfler’s advocacy on this subject have brought the problem to light with the FDA, state medical boards, and legitimate stem cell researchers in the field. His approach may not be to your liking, and his forthrightness with his opinions will rub some the wrong way, but please don’t insult his credentials or his esteemed standing in the world. While you are welcome to your opinion, perhaps it is you who can try a different approach.

  5. This post is very misleading. The MAJOR reason why he was brought up by the board was his affiliation with Subsys and him over prescribing it. But whatever fits your narrative right?

    1. No, it’s not. The board had a lot to say about the stem cell side of things too including noting 6 complaints related to the stem cell/regenerative med stuff.
      The business is also called “Stem Cell Centers of Minnesota”.
      It’s true that those at stem cell clinic & supplier firms who have been subject to governmental actions of various kinds have also often been called out for other troubling non-stem cell-related issues as well, but I don’t find that particularly reassuring.

    2. I’m also starting to see some “personal bias” in this site “The Niche”, the principal of this site does not mention the information about Mesoblast Ltd. headquartered in Melbourne Australia. They are listed on the NASDQ: MESO. I read the company’s 2018 annual report and it was exceptionally informative. The CEO is a MD and has been developing their precursor MSC cells for the past 10 years. Just recently they have been given FDA designation as orphan drug and fast track for their clinical trials to be conducted in the US for children that are refractory to steroid therapy for their acute GVHD. The “publisher” of the Niche seems to focus on the clinics inside the US operating on the fringe and the declaration of unproven results. Mesoblast has just inked a deal with a distributor in Europe to market their precursor MSC product in Europe and South America for chronic lower back pain. Mesoblast’s precursor cell MSC product for children with acute GVHD has been approved for medical use in Japan.
      Even if the product does not have definitive results in all patients, but perhaps in 20%, or 50% of those treated, this is not out of the field of treatment for conditions that have no other effective treatment, or are patients that are non-responders.
      Just recently Emory University in Atlanta is doing a phase 1 clinical trial using MSCs. The patients that are participating in this are post SCT with chronic GVHD and on 40 to 50 mg of prednisone. The source of the MSC material is from the post SCT patient bone marrow (in allogeneic SCT), the MSCs are isolated from the bone marrow material and grown in tissue culture, the most recent dosage infused is 2×10^6 cells/kg . (Which is close to the dosage given at Neil Riordan’s clinic in Panama and Dream Body clinic in Puerto Vallarta Mexico, and other clinics outside the USA.)
      Two results being investigated by Emory University Medical: the safety of using the (allogeneic) SCT patients bone marrow derived MSCs, will the MSC cells persist in the persons system, and if this would allow the dosage of prednisone to be reduced from 40 to 50mg to 10 to 5mg, or eliminated completely from being needed to control the cGVHD.

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