BIOELECTRIC STIMULATION FOR ORGAN REGENERATION



Leslie W. Miller, M.D., Leonhardt Ventures, Tampa, FL, USA

One of the biggest limitations to the benefit of stem cell therapy for organ regeneration is the very brief time (hours to days) that cells remain in the target organ post delivery. The body has a number of electrical fields as evidenced by an EKG. Bioelectric stimulation is a growing field that takes advantage of manipulating these fields by non-invasive stimulation of the target tissue at very precise frequencies. Decades of research has led to identification of the precise frequency that is the signature of a large number of proteins in the body. Stimulation at this precise signal can induce the controlled expression and upregulation of up to 13 targeted proteins in the heart and other tissues that have each been shown to be beneficial in organ regeneration. This includes SDF-1, which is one of the most potent stem cell mobilizing proteins in the body, as well as multiple growth factors such as IGF, HGF, PDGF, EGF, HGF, and VEGF, and other proteins such as eNOS, Tropoelastin, and Follistatin. The stimulator used is programmable and delivers each of the signals at specific duration and strength for that protein, and in any sequence selected. This strategy much more closely mimics the multiple proteins involved native tissue and organ repair.

A second major problem that is that all cell therapy to date has utilized only a single delivery. The Leonhard strategy is that the local expression of each of the target proteins are stimulated in repetitive cycles to continually drive native tissue repair.

These proteins can be also be delivered directly into the target tissue to enhance the effect of the biostimulation, either alone or in combination with repeated delivery of stem cells and other substances shown to be beneficial such as matrix, exosomes, and hydrogels. This novel approach addresses most of the deficiencies in the field and promises to markedly enhance the possibility of organ regeneration.