Author Archives: Dr. Greg Maguire, Ph.D.

Why Skin-Derived, Adipose Mesenchymal Stem Cell Released Molecules (NeoGenesis) Are Better Than Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cell Cytokines (AnteAge) for Post-Procedure Healing

What AnteAge Doesn’t Know and Therefore Doesn’t Tell You

Consider the stem cells used by AnteAge to make their products: Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells (BMSCs) and the molecules they release prolong and enhance inflammation by increasing survival and function of neutrophils (Castella et al, 2011). Under hypoxic conditions, which induces the activation of TRL4, BMSCs secrete pro-inflammatory factors and decrease the polarization of macrophages from the M1 to M2 phenotype (Faulknor et al, 2017; Waterman et al, 2010). Therefore, BMSCs cultured in normal hypoxic conditions in the laboratory are secreting pro-inflammatory factors and when administered to wounded skin will induce inflammation by recruiting neutrophils and M1 type pro-inflammatory macrophages. When you put AnteAge on your skin, these are the pro-inflammatory molecules damging your skin. In contradistinction, consider the cells used by Neogenesis. The phenotype and stem cell released molecules (also called the secretome) from skin-derived adipose mesenchymal stem cells (AMSCs) are largely unaffected by prolonged hypoxia, not recruiting neutrophils (Kalinina et al, 2015), and the molecules released from AMSCs were found to better induce the effects of the anti-inflammatory M2 macrophage phenotype than the molecules released from BMSCs (Sukho et al, 2018). These results provide strong evidence that the molecules released from AMSC are more beneficial than those from BMSCs to induce appropriate wound healing processes through the shift from a pro-inflammatory state to an anti-inflammatory, pro-healing state.

These pro-inflammatory signals from BMSC cytokines are in addition to their likelihood of containing pro-oncogenic signals that are absent in AMSCs, that I have previously reviewed in multiple, peer-reviewed, National Library of Medicine journal articles (Maguire, 2019; 2021; 2022).

Why does AnteAge use these inflammatory and potentially oncogenic molecules in their products? The first clue comes from who founded the company and was its CEO for years, John Sanderson. A former physician who lost his medical license because of incompetence, repeated incompetence, and sexual misconduct with one of his patients.

Sanderson previously was a family practice physician with an undergraduate medical degree – a bachelor’s degree in medicine. Once Sanderson finished his Canadian undergraduate degree in medicine, once he passed the medical board test in the US, regulations permitted him to use the designation “M.D.” Sanderson frequently finds himself in disputes with other companies, one of which exposed that Sanderson committed domestic violence. He was not trained as a dermatologist and was not board certified. He obviously has little to no understanding of the skin’s powerful immune system, and no idea of how bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells work in the body. Upon losing his medical license, he started a company to do further harm to people by having them use products that induce inflammation and potentially cancer.

Trying to understand why a company would bring a proinflammatory, possibly pro-oncogenic product to the market, I looked closer at the company. Because John Sanderson is not a scientist, and has never listed that he has any scientific publication, only misleading blogs, I wondered how did he come to choose his technology. I discovered that Sanderson had enlisted fellow Canadian, Jonathan Lakey, Ph.D. as his scientific advisor. To no surprise, the man who had lost his medical license because of incompetence had hired a scientist, Jonathan Lakey, who had been fired from his university because of fraud.

A non-profit government organization in Canada fired Jonathan Lakey for the same reason:

Then Jonathan Lakey was charged with fraud and racketeering at one of the companies in which he was an officer:

Jonathan Lakey’s involvement with a number of other companies that are pump and dump schemes has made the news a number of times. Clearly, using a product on your skin from this dynamic fraudster-incompetence duo is a bad choice – they do not have anyone’s well being in mind.

There are other skin care companies led by physicians. I suggest if you’re interested in their products, go to the state medical board website in which they practice, and look at the current status of their medical license. For example, you can search physicians in California here, and in Colorado here. You may be surprised what you find. Simply type in their name, and you’re likely to find disiplinery actions and loss of license.

References

Castella M.A. et al (2011) Toll-like receptor-3-activated human mesenchymal stromal cells significantly prolong the survival and function of neutrophils. Stem Cells. 29:1001–1011.

Faulknor R.A. et al (2017) Hypoxia impairs mesenchymal stromal cell-induced macrophage M1 to M2. Technology. 2017;5:81–86. doi: 10.1142/S2339547817500042.

Kalinina N. et al. (2015) Characterization of secretomes provides evidence for adipose-derived mesenchymal stromal cells subtypes. Stem Cell Res. Ther. ;6:221.

Maguire G. Transplanted stem cells survive a long time: do they make you sick? J R Soc Med. 2019 Oct;112(10):412-414.

Maguire G. (2021) Stem cells part of the innate and adaptive immune systems as a therapeutic for Covid-19. Commun Integr Biol. 14(1):186-198.

Maguire G. (2022) Chronic inflammation induced by microneedling and the use of bone marrow stem cell cytokines. J Tissue Viability. 31(4):687-692.

Sukho P et al (2018) Human mesenchymal stromal cell sheets induce macrophages predominantly to an anti-inflammatory phenotype. Stem Cells Dev. 27:922–934.

Waterman R.S. et al (2010) A new mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) paradigm, polarization into a pro-inflammatory MSC1 or an immunosuppressive MSC2 phenotype. PLoS ONE. 5:e10088.

A New Means of Skin Care: Systems Therapeutic for Physiological Renormalization

Dr. Greg Maguire developed the concept of the Systems Therapeutic for Physiological Renormalization while he was a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley. Working and learning about biotechnology in a laboratory at Berkeley where two scientists, Dr. Don Glaser and Dr. Kary Mullis, had won Nobel Prizes and started the world’s first biotech company (Cetus Corp), Maguire’s attention would be drawn from basic biology to biotechnology. While at Berkeley, Dr. Maguire was also influenced by a colleague, Dr. James Allison, a professor of immunology who was working to renormalize the immune system in cancerous tissues. Learning how to reengage T-cells in the adaptive immune system to attack and kill cancer cells led to Dr. Allison’s being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine. The current “checkpoint inhibitors” used to treat melanoma, for example, are a result of Dr. Allison’s work. This was very influential in Dr. Maguire’s approach to therapeutic development, and creating the concept of physiological renormalization. This way of thinking is in contradistinction to methodologies that, for example, knock-down the immune system such that one is now subject to infection, or hyperactivating the immune system to the point where the immune system attacks the self, destroying one’s own cells.

Maguire was later awarded a Fulbright Scholarship from the National Institutes of Health to more thoroughly develop the concepts of systems therapeutics while an associate professor in Japan. This was important because the scientific community in Japan traditionally places more value on a systems, non-reductionist, approach to healthcare and therapeutic development. In his non-reductionist approach, Maguire uses multiple molecules, instead of just one or a couple of molecules, to target multiple pathways underlying a disease or condition, not just one or a few pathways as used in previous therapeutic designs. The multiple molecules renormalize the multiple pathways and thus renormalize the physiology of the compromised tissue, such as the skin. Simply put, diseases and conditions of the skin have many unique abnormal pathways that underlie the condition, and each unique pathway must be renormalized using many molecules, each of which acts at one of the many abnormal pathways underlying the disease or condition. This new means of developing therapeutics has been accepted by the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the American Chemical Society, and has been published many times in peer reviewed, National Library of Medicine listed scientific journals. Dr. Maguire explains in his book, “Adult Stem Cell Released Molecules: A Paradigm Shift to Systems Therapeutics,” the origins and details of his approach to therapeutic development. One aspect of the Systems Therapeutics for Physiological Renormalization approach to skin care is the use of stem cell released molecules from adult stem cells derived from the skin. Dr. Maguire first developed this technology while a professor at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and has demonstrated the safety and efficacy of this approach, detailed some of the mechanisms of action, and published clinical studies of how well this technology works for skin conditions. In this blog, Dr. Maguire will be discussing how to best care for skin based on an analysis of the science and technology currently available for skin care therapeutics. You will come to understand that, for example, the choice of stem cell type to derive the molecules is critical; that tissue specific stem cells, first described by Dr. Elly Tanaka at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, are critical to optimal healing, where skin derived stem cells (SDSCs) are used to treat the skin; and that some stem cell types, such as bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) may be inflammatory and oncogenic because of recirculating inflammatory T-cells and cancer cells that interact with and negatively transform the BMSCs within the bone marrow. We shall see that stem cell released molecules from skin-derived stem cells are critical to optimal skin care, and that many other molecules in combination with stem cell released molecules provide optimal benefit to the skin, including for aged skin, wound healing, and various inflammatory skin conditions, including autoimmune conditions.