A medical advancement in stem cells is saving dogs’ lives across the U.S. For the first time, veterinarians are using stem cells to treat dogs, with promising results. Stem cells made from a dog’s fat tissue are being used now to treat osteoarthritis in elbows and hips, fractures, and tendon and ligament injuries.

A Poway, California company, Vet-Stem, is now training veterinarians in their new procedure of stem cell treatment to save dogs’ lives across the U.S. More than 584 small animal veterinarians nationwide are certified and starting to use the therapy on canine patients.

“We’ve seen stem cell therapy help dogs whose pain was previously so severe that they struggled to stand, jump into cars, chase balls or run up and down stairs,” says Dr. Robert Harman, founder of San Diego-based Vet-Stem. “Fat stem cell therapy avoids the ethical concerns surrounding embryonic stem cell research, because our process uses the animal’s own fat to isolate adult stem cells.”

Stem cell therapy stimulates healthy cells to grow within the injured area, spurring regeneration. The cells aren’t foreign to the body, engineered or modified in any way. Vet-Stem, the nation’s only company offering veterinarians fat-derived stem cell therapy, isolates stem and regenerative cells from the animal’s own fat for therapeutic injection into injured tissue. The cells are isolated and returned to the authorized veterinarian for treatment on the injured animal within 48 hours.

Equine veterinarians have successfully treated more than 2,500 tendon, ligament joint injuries using Vet-Stem’s fat stem cell therapy for horses. The therapy has shown a return to prior performance levels at rates of 77 percent, 76 percent and 57 percent, in tendon, ligament, and joint injuries, respectively. Many horses, such as 2006 U.S. Open polo champion Rio, have overcome potentially career-ending injuries to return to competition at their prior level of performance.

Vet-Stem’s first blinded, controlled multi-center osteoarthritis study was recently published in Veterinary Therapeutics. Clinical trials studying the use of stem cell therapy for arthritis in dog elbows and knees are concluding, with successful results to be published later this year.

Since 2005, selected clinics have treated dogs with osteoarthritis and orthopedic soft tissue injuries. Initial studies demonstrate that intra-articular administration of VSRCs significantly decrease pain and improves comfort in the majority of cases. Duration of the benefit from a single injection varies from several months to more than one year.