Leading UK stem cell scientist believes new system has the potential to make stem cell technology more widely available to vets.

A new process to harvest stem cells through a process of cloning is offering UK equine vets a unique, non-invasive treatment option.

The commercial procedure to isolate and copy stem cells from a simple blood sample, rather than by invasive bone marrow or adipose tissue extraction, is understood to be a UK first.

Leading UK stem cell scientist Erik Miljan is the inventor of the system, marketed under the StemPlan banner.

Dr Miljan – who has been involved in seven human stem cell clinical trials and has published in more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications – is offering vets pure, frozen, ready-to-inject formulations of cloned stem cells produced from each individual patient.

Potential

He believes StemPlan – which is licensed by the VMD, and was developed through an Innovate UK Government grant – has the potential to make stem cell technology more widely available to vets, partly due to a reduced potential risk to patients when harvesting cells with traditional methods.

Dr Miljan said: “The field of regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy is not novel and has been used for more than a decade. However, the source of stem cells to date has required an invasive procedure – either extracting from bone marrow or adipose tissue.

“What I’ve done is kind of like what Steve Jobs did with the iPhone. I didn’t necessarily create a novel technology, but I’ve created technology that makes stem cell therapy accessible to the customer through a simple blood draw.”