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By the time Bob the cat came to the UC Davis veterinary hospital, he had used up most of his nine lives. Afflicted with a painful oral inflammatory disorder, Bob had already lost all of his teeth in an effort to treat the disease known as feline chronic gingivostomatitis, or FCGS. In a last-ditch effort, Bob’s owner enrolled him in a clinical trial to receive a novel stem cell therapy treatment.
Luckily for Bob and many other cats in the trial, the approach worked and Bob went on to live a normal, pain-free life. (He died several months ago of causes unrelated to FCGS.) Results from the clinical trial recently appeared in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.
“This is the first study to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of using this type of stem cell therapy for a naturally occurring, chronic inflammatory disease in cats,” said the study’s lead author, Boaz Arzi, a veterinary dental surgeon at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
As a naturally occurring animal disease, FCGS also has the potential to serve as a useful model for the treatment of human chronic oral inflammatory disease — an approach increasingly known as “One Health.”
Read full, original post: Cat stem cell therapy gives humans hope
