A Doctor’s Journey Through COVID-19 and the Revolutionary Science of Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Three years ago, I was sitting on a picnic table at my ranch near the Oklahoma border, sighting in a rifle to deal with our pig problem. During a phone call with my best friend, I started feeling hot. He asked if I could smell okay. I couldn’t. Within hours, I was in the emergency room with COVID-19. Within days, I was in a medically induced coma, fighting for my life.
The doctors told my family I probably wouldn’t make it. Thirty-seven patients before me on ECMO had already died. But I survived. And that survival changed everything about how I see my purpose in medicine.
The Fight for Survival
When I arrived at the hospital in March 2020, the treatment protocol was brutally simple: go home, and when you can’t breathe, come back to the hospital. There was nothing else to offer.
I was intubated and placed in a medically induced coma for three weeks. My immune system was attacking my lungs so aggressively in its attempt to eliminate the virus that it was destroying them. The medical team had to transfer me to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas because the local hospital didn’t have the equipment to save me.
They put me on ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—a machine that takes blood out of your body, oxygenates it, and pumps it back in. The medical team actually argued about whether to even try. They had lost 37 patients in a row on ECMO with COVID-19. A small female pulmonologist fought for me, saying I deserved a chance.
That decision saved my life.
The Intervention That Changed Everything
While I was unconscious, my family and colleagues were fighting another battle. They knew about mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and their powerful anti-inflammatory properties. They made calls to politicians, hospital administrators, and anyone who could help.
Two critical interventions happened:
My brother, who started the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, helped secure an experimental anti-inflammatory drug called tocilizumab. It blocks receptors for interleukin-6, a key inflammatory molecule.
The hospital received a dose of umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells just in time. I became the first COVID patient to receive tocilizumab.
When I woke up three weeks later, I had lost 60 pounds. I had no muscle mass. It took me three months just to walk again. But I was alive. My infectious disease doctor told me plainly: “You’re not supposed to be here, but you are. What are you going to do?”
A New Mission
That question changed my life. I made a commitment to myself: the rest of my existence would be dedicated to getting mesenchymal stem cells available to as many people as possible in the world.
It’s a mission I’ve pursued with unwavering dedication for the past three years. And to understand why MSCs are so powerful, we need to explore the science behind them.
Understanding Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Where Do MSCs Come From?
When conception occurs, a sperm penetrates an egg, genetics mix, and an embryo forms. That single cell divides into 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 cells. At that stage, each cell is an embryonic stem cell capable of becoming any tissue in the body.
The industry spent 20 years and billions of dollars researching embryonic stem cells. The verdict is in: they don’t work therapeutically. They essentially want to become a baby.
But those 64 cells eventually grow into 110 trillion cells, and a baby is born. After birth, the umbilical cord is clamped and cut. The placenta, umbilical cord, and amnion—what we call the “afterbirth”—typically gets thrown away. But those tissues contain incredibly young, powerful cells.
That’s where we derive our therapeutic MSCs. Not from babies—babies are fine and are never donated. We use donated placental tissue that would otherwise be medical waste.
MSCs Are Everywhere in Your Body
Blood vessels are found everywhere in your body—in every organ and tissue. And MSCs reside on those blood vessels throughout your body. They’re in your bone marrow, your liver, your lungs, your heart, your intestines, your skin, cartilage, bone, and muscle. Everywhere.
There are three main types of stem cells working together to keep you healthy:
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in your bone marrow produce your immune system—white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are found everywhere there’s a blood vessel and help regulate inflammation, support the immune system, and facilitate regeneration.
Tissue-specific stem cells are dedicated to regenerating specific tissues like your liver, lungs, heart, and skin.
What MSCs Actually Do in Your Body
MSCs perform four critical functions:
- Control inflammation
- Modulate the immune system
- Stimulate regeneration
- Provide energy to cells
Let me give you a remarkable example of the energy function. When you get an infection, your white blood cell count goes up. That happens within 24 hours—you go from a normal white count to an extra 500 billion cells in your bloodstream to fight the infection.
Where does the energy come from to create 500 billion new cells so quickly? MSCs in your bone marrow divide rapidly and donate their mitochondria—the cellular powerhouses that create energy—to the HSCs and progenitor cells that become white blood cells.
Without MSCs, you wouldn’t have a functional immune system.
The Devastating Decline: Why We Age and Get Sick
Here’s something that will change how you think about aging and disease: I believe the majority of chronic illnesses are due to either a decreased number of MSCs or dysfunction of those stem cells, resulting in increased inflammation.
By the time you reach skeletal maturity—around age 25—90% of the potency of your MSCs is already gone. Ninety percent. And it only gets worse from there. By the time you’re in your 80s, you have very few functional MSCs left.
This decline manifests in several ways:
- Increased inflammation throughout your body
- Dysregulated immune system (autoimmune diseases, allergies, chronic infections)
- Decreased ability to regenerate (osteoarthritis, slow healing, tissue degeneration)
- Decreased energy and cellular function
The Math of Cellular Decline
The numbers are staggering. Take one newborn MSC and grow it in the lab. It divides every 24 hours. Do the math: one cell becomes 2, then 4, 8, 16, and so on. In 30 days, you have one billion cells from a single cell.
But if you’re 35-40 years old, that doubling time goes from one day to two days. After 30 days, you only have 32,000 cells—not a billion.
At my age, the doubling time is two and a half days. That same starting cell produces only 4,000 cells after a month.
Here’s the critical insight: if you have a million-cell problem and you’re only producing 30,000 cells, you’re not going to get over it. Even if you’re producing 900,000 cells, you’re still not going to achieve complete healing.
The Power of Young Cells
Research from Harvard demonstrates this principle beautifully. Scientists took old mice with cognitive problems, skeletal muscle issues, and heart dysfunction. They literally sutured them to young mice, allowing them to share a blood supply.
The results were incredible. The old mice, exposed to the secretions from young MSCs, behaved much younger. They had increased capacity to repair skeletal muscle, improved neurogenesis in the brain, better myocardial function—everything improved.
We replicated this in our own lab. I took some of my own MSCs—remember, I’m older—and measured their doubling time: 36 hours. Then we took just the secretions (what we call MTF—mesenchymal trophic factors) from umbilical MSCs and put it on my cells.
My cells’ doubling time went from 36 hours to 18 hours. The secretions of young cells made my old cells work twice as fast.
The Clinical Evidence: Real Patients, Real Results
COVID-19 Treatment
A few months after I recovered, the University of Miami conducted a study on COVID-19 patients. Dr. Camilla Ricordi had a GMP manufacturing lab and decided to treat the dying patients in front of him with MSCs.
The trial was small—just 12 patients received MSCs and 12 received saline. But the results were astounding:
In the MSC group: Only 1 out of 12 died in 30 days (and that patient was 84 years old). If you were under 80, you had a 100% survival rate.
In the saline group: 7 out of 12 died within the first 30 days.
The blood markers told the story. TNF-alpha and interleukin-6—the commanders of inflammation—were greatly reduced by day six in the MSC group. The saline group showed minimal change.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
A study took 172 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and gave them a single treatment of 60 million umbilical MSCs. The results:
- All patients improved
- No serious adverse events
- TNF-alpha reduced by 50%
- Interleukin-6 reduced by 50%
Compare this to the pharmaceutical approach. Drugs like Humira, Enbrel, and Cimzia are antibodies that bind to TNF-alpha, temporarily removing it from your system. You feel great for 6-12 weeks, then you need another shot because nothing has addressed the source of the problem. Eventually, your body makes antibodies to the antibodies, and they stop working.
Type 2 Diabetes
A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial treated type 2 diabetics who were on insulin with a single treatment of 120 million MSCs. The study followed them rigorously for three years.
The results:
- Post-meal glucose dropped significantly at 6 months
- The difference remained statistically significant for 18 months
- Insulin use dropped by 80%
- Hemoglobin A1c improvements lasted up to 27 months
This study gives us important guidance: for chronic adult conditions related to MSC exhaustion, treatment effects can last 15-27 months from a single treatment.
What Makes Our Panama Clinic Different
After 16 years of operation and treating over 11,000 patients with more than 50,000 IV infusions, we’ve learned what works. Here’s what sets us apart:
1. Potency Testing
Anyone can count cells. Anyone can verify that cells look like MSCs under a microscope. Anyone can check that 95% are viable. But what do they actually do?
We perform functional assays on every batch of cells. We take human monocytes (white blood cells) and deliberately trigger them to produce inflammatory molecules. Then we test whether our MSCs can suppress that inflammation. If they can’t, they don’t pass. They don’t go to patients.
We also test their ability to suppress T-cell clonal expansion—a key measure of immune modulation. No suppression, no approval.
2. Careful Candidate Selection
We know what MSCs can and cannot do. We don’t treat Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s patients at our Panama clinic, even though we receive many applications for these conditions.
Why? By the time symptoms manifest, 95% of dopamine-producing cells in Parkinson’s are already dead or dying. MSCs don’t produce dopamine. They don’t become dopamine-producing cells. They can help support remaining cells, but the benefits are fleeting—lasting only 3-4 months.
We have limited capacity. We focus on treating people who can achieve long-term benefits, not conditions requiring chronic treatment every few months for life.
3. Proprietary Cell Selection Process
Between 2010 and 2012, we invested heavily in research to answer a critical question: What’s the difference between cells with unbelievable clinical benefit and those with zero benefit?
We analyzed 1,200 different molecules secreted by MSCs from various donors. We found about a dozen molecules that differ significantly between highly effective cells and less effective ones.
We use this molecular profile to identify which donor cells will have high clinical efficacy before we ever use them in patients. This selection process is unique to our clinic.
4. Extensive Publications
We’ve published research on MSC treatment for kidney failure, multiple sclerosis, brain tumors in rats (for FDA studies), and autism. Our 2007 paper on stem cell therapy for autism has been downloaded 90,000 times. For context, the average scientific journal article gets read by three people.
Our paper on how to grow clinically relevant cells has been cited 558 times. The scientific community knows who we are and how we operate.
5. Evidence-Based Dosing
I hear it constantly: “I can go to Mexico and get 300 million cells for less money than you charge.”
Good luck. Most of those clinics don’t even have the equipment to count cells. More importantly, more is not better.
The University of Miami studied frailty of aging with three dose levels: 50 million, 100 million, and 200 million cells. At 50 million, there was some benefit. At 100 million, pretty decent benefit. At 200 million? Zero benefit.
We’ve also shown that spreading out treatment over multiple days works better than giving all the cells at once. Our research confirms what others have found: you can overwhelm the body’s ability to utilize the cells and trigger unintended consequences.
Our sweet spot is 120-140 million cells divided over 3 days. We’ve been doing this for years with excellent results.
Safety Profile
Two large meta-analyses of mesenchymal stem cell therapy consistently show they’re safe when prepared and screened properly.
Our data from over 50,000 infusions shows an adverse reaction rate of about 16%. But let’s be clear about what that means:
- Fatigue
- Pain at the infusion site
- Mild chills
- Feeling hot
- Temporary tiredness
The average duration of any adverse event is less than one day (0.8 days). These cells, when properly prepared and screened, provide benefit without being toxic to anyone.
Real Stories That Drive My Mission
Ryan’s Story: Muscular Dystrophy
Ryan Benton, my best friend’s son, came to us at age 22 with Becker’s muscular dystrophy—a condition where the body produces only 50% of normal dystrophin levels (compared to less than 5% in Duchenne’s). His lung function tests indicated he didn’t have much time left.
We’ve been treating him for 15 years now. He’s 37 years old and still breathing. We eventually got compassionate use approval from the FDA to treat him in the U.S.
The detailed weekly data revealed something critical: his breathing function was exquisitely sensitive to treatment. It would improve dramatically, then start declining around 4.5 months. By six months, he was back to baseline.
We went back to the FDA and they allowed us to treat him every three months. His lung function stayed elevated and never declined back to baseline. That’s my protocol for genetic diseases: treatment every 3-4 months.
The Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient
A patient I met recently on a trip to the Bahamas told me about his sister. Six years ago, she was on expensive anti-rheumatic drugs for her rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband was an astrophysicist who couldn’t quit his job at age 70 because they couldn’t afford her medications without his health insurance.
Her brother sent her to Panama for treatment. That was the last time she needed any anti-rheumatic medication. It’s been six years.
The Autistic Children
Another patient sent two autistic children to Panama. One is now in normal school. The younger child had never spoken before treatment. After two trips, that child now speaks.
The Future: Making This Available to Everyone
We need randomized controlled trials to advance this field. We’re working toward that goal with a 37,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, including 11,000 square feet of clean rooms. My daughter Chloe oversaw the construction—it’s an incredible facility.
We’re targeting orphan conditions—underserved populations with diseases that have no good treatment options. We don’t have the $300 million budgets that pharmaceutical companies have for clinical trials, but with a small enough patient population and a strong efficacy signal, we believe we can get FDA approval in the next 3-4 years.
We’re also expanding globally. We’re coming to another country soon (I can’t discuss details yet), and we’re in talks with partners in the Middle East and Far East. Our goal is to make this therapy as broadly available as possible.
Why I Do This
I have the best job in the world. I get to meet people like you and hear your stories. Some patients have been to Panama five times. Some are going next month. I recently spent 12 days in Australia with families who have autistic children we’ve treated—they became our tour guides for the entire trip.
Wherever I travel, I find patients. They tell me their stories. A sister freed from expensive medications. Children who couldn’t speak now talking. Patients who regained mobility, hope, and quality of life.
Yes, there are struggles along the way. But nothing—absolutely nothing—overwhelms the happiness and joy I get from helping people and watching them get better.
Three years ago, I was dying in a hospital bed. Today, I’m dedicated to ensuring that as many people as possible have access to the therapy that saved my life. That’s not just my job. It’s my purpose.
This blog post is based on a presentation given by a physician who survived COVID-19 with the help of mesenchymal stem cells and has dedicated his practice to advancing this therapy. The information is for educational purposes and should not be considered medical advice. Consult with qualified healthcare providers for personalized medical guidance.