Dr Ruqqia Mir, a consultant at the groundbreaking Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center, is excited.
We’re speaking to her just days after its doctors performed the UAE’s first successful bone marrow transplant on a patient with Multiple Sclerosis – with immediate improvements in her condition.
“She did really well,” she beams. “We are an innovation and research-driven facility but we’re committed to helping patients heal today — as well as tomorrow and for years to come.”
If this patient continues to improve — and the expectation is that she will — then it will be a big moment for healthcare in the UAE. Stem cell research and therapy is a relatively new science for the region, if not the world, and it has the potential to make huge inroads into the work healthcare providers undertake not just in MS, but cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and heart disease, right through to burns and osteoarthritis.
Such studies and trials also allow researchers to explore and understand how diseases develop in the first place, and Dr Mir is particularly intrigued by the ability to harness stem cells to test new drugs for safety and effectiveness.
So how did ADSCC use their expertise on this pioneering patient with MS? Dr Mir calls stem cells the body’s raw materials, the building blocks for healthy blood, but also for functioning brain cells, heart cells and bone cells. We make them all the time, except when the bone marrow is damaged.
What happens to rectify that is where the incredible regenerative medicine comes in. A stem cell transplant can involve taking healthy stem cells from the bone marrow of someone else — usually related — and transferring them to the person in need. What ASDCC did in their transplant was more complex still; they took out the healthy stem cells from the patient and grew them in the lab, watching them divide to form “daughter cells.”
“It’s like a reset; we give them chemotherapy, which kind of destroys their immune system,” Dr Mir explains. “Then we give those healthy stem cells back to the patient. With those stem cells, they can start afresh, to basically destroy the memory cells that were causing the immune dysfunction.”
Happily, Dr Mir reports, their first patient’s balance is already better and vision is clearer.
“Soft improvements, but we hope the real ones will be in six months’ time,” she says. “In the studies that have been done elsewhere, the disease doesn’t come back for five years, sometimes even 10. Imagine the quality of life improvements for them, their families, their carers, and also the financial impact of not having to administer very expensive drugs.”
MS isn’t the only stem-cell application ADSCC have been working on; last year they also began the first experiment of its kind in the region on the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy in the treatment of cancers such as myeloma, lymphoma, and certain forms of leukemia. Similar to the processes with bone marrow transplant, the procedure returns adjusted immune cells back into the body to find and destroy cancer cells.
And if all this sounds like a niche concern, given ADSCC has treated just 13 cancer patients and 1 MS patient to date, it might be worth noting that ADSCC was commended by none other than the director-general of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for its cutting-edge stem cell Covid-19 treatments to infected patients.
Gradually, then, the picture is beginning to build of ADSCC — and the Emirate more widely — becoming a healthcare centre of excellence, a life sciences hub having a major impact on the wellbeing of nation. Which was more than just a hope when ADSCC began operations in 2019; it was the actual mandate.
As their website says, ADSCC was founded “with the primary objective of meeting the growing domestic and regional demand for advanced medical services”.
And while American Hospital Dubai launched what it called the “first stem cell transplant centre in the UAE” last year, it’s a treatment centre which has secured stem cell research and technology from elsewhere. ADSCC is, in that context, more encouraging for the longterm healthcare ecosystem of the UAE, given that it delivers cutting edge research as well as treatment.
Not that it’s completely out on a limb. Dr Mir acknowledges the pioneering work in this sector that has taken place in Europe and America; there were over 22,000 stem cell transplants in the United States in 2020, the last year for which there are figures.
But ADSCC does fit snugly into the plans to strengthen the healthcare sector that were part of the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, first presented 14 years ago. That official government document envisaged “premium healthcare assets” that put patients first, raised the quality of healthcare, and encouraged innovation to prevent as well as treat disease. It also promised large investments in technology to grow the medical sector — and it’s worth noting that ADSCC is part of the Pure Health Group, a healthcare platform in which state-owned investor ADQ is majority shareholder.
All of which begs the question, when will the stem cell research and therapy that could so obviously make a huge difference to so many people’s lives be available via health insurance? For all the benefits of regenerative medicine, it’s currently still only a choice for people who can afford it. Dr Mir estimates that in the US, a two-year, disease-modifying treatment of the kind they are working on might cost up to USD$160,000 (Dh587,600). So as you might expect, she cautions against getting too carried away just yet.
“In America and Europe, stem cell transplants are now a standard of care and not just a clinical option, and it should be available to patients who have failed at least one disease modifying treatment, if they have a relapsing remitting form of MS,” she says. “They have identified this as a very cost effective treatment.
“But it’s not for everyone; it may not be a good option for those who have progressive MS, for example. This first patient was sponsored by us, but we are pursuing this treatment with the Department of Health and insurance partners as the studies are there. It’s proven that it gives the patient the best quality of life.”
No wonder Dr Mir, and the rest of the Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center, are so excited.
