Comment Reply

Hi, Anon. I'm so sorry to read about what you are going through with your son.

Can you tell us where you live? In our researching, it may help us find something that is available to you. Michelle thought you might be in the UK, is that the case?

Stem cell treatment is still in very early stages, and not yet a common procedure. One thing that might help you is to search for clinical trials where doctors are doing research in stem cell treatments.

One place to find this information is:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/

which is a registry of both publicly and privately funded clinical trials both in the United States and in 163 countries around the world.

You can click on "Background Information" to see how the site works, or you can click on "Search for Clinical Trials" to bring up a general search page. If, for instance, I put "stem cells and brain" into this search box, I will get the following page of results:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=stem+cells+and+brain++

However, that page refers to 248 studies, of all kinds of patients in all kinds of places. Instead of that general search, you may want to click on "advanced search," which allows you to fill in several fields of information (including a location).

Doing that brings up this page of just 6 results, two of which are recruiting:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=+&recr=&rslt=&type=&cond=brain&intr=stem+cell&outc=&lead=&spons=&id=&state1=&cntry1=EU%3AGB&state2=&cntry2=&state3=&cntry3=&locn=&rcv_s=&rcv_e=&lup_s=&lup_e=

If none of those trials are appropriate, you can back out and try a different search. I also did searches on glioblastoma, brain and pediatric, in addition to stem cells and United Kingdom; each brings up different results that might be helpful.

Studies marked in green are recruiting; studies marked in red are not. You can tell the site to hide the studies that are not recruiting. Here is a page of results I got when I searched on brain, glioblastoma and stem cell (but I did not specify a location):

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?recr=Open&cond=brain+Glioblastoma&intr=stem+cell

Unfortunately, all of those open studies are in the United States.

This search on just brain and stem cell resulted in 69 results, and 3 of them show to be located in the UK:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results/map/click?recr=Open&cond=brain&intr=stem+cell&map=EU&map.x=216&map.y=332

Here is an explainer page that also has links to the National Institutes of Health's page on stem cells, the FDA clinical studies, a booklet of questions to ask overseas stem cell therapy providers (some are not reputable), and more:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4837626_volunteer-clinical-stem-cell-research.html

Please let us know where you live and if travel for treatment is an option, and we can see what else we might be able to find out for you.