USED to treat a range of cancers and chronic diseases, stem cell and immunotherapy services were on Saturday introduced for the first time in Guyana by Woodlands Hospital in collaboration with Fidelity Healthcare Ltd, a registered medical company in Trinidad and Tobago.

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses certain parts of a person’s immune system to fight against cancer. This can be done in two different ways: either by stimulating one’s immune system to work harder or smarter to attack cancer cells; or, by giving your immune system components, such as man-made immune system proteins to do the same.

In sharing his personal experience of using this treatment at the launch, Dr. Pramod Tembe, of Woodlands Hospital, revealed that at the age of 16, he began suffering from an autoimmune disease that partially handicapped him.

He would experience severe back pains and his spine became stiff. He related that he would take painkillers but in 2019, he met a doctor and friend in Trinidad and Tobago who proposed stem cell therapy to him.

Given that he had little to lose, even though he was quite skeptical, Dr. Tembe said he went ahead with it. He explained that stem cells were taken from his bone marrow and injected into his spine and today, after going through the process, he is standing, literally.

Dr. Tembe said that the immune system has a tremendous capacity to kill bacteria and viruses.

“With immunotherapy, we are going to teach our immune system to fight against this kind of cell. Not only that, we are going to create artificial immune cells in the lab and introduce it to the body to kill the cancer cells,” Dr. Tembe explained.

Further, he stated that the vaccine, when entering the body, is going to find the cancer cells and not only is it going to kill them, but because the T cells have memory cells, if the cancer were to come back, it would kill it right away.

The hospital will be offering two types of treatment – Cancer Immunotherapy and Stem Cell Therapy.

“At Woodlands Ltd., we are initially offering autologous dendritic cell therapy-based immunotherapy which is approved for use in several countries across the globe given its demonstrated effectiveness in increasing survival rates of patients with cancer,” the hospital stated.

Additionally, the US FDA has approved the treatment for prostate cancer, and Indian FDA (Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation) for malignant solid tumors such as prostate, ovarian, colorectal, and lung cancer.

The second type of treatment that will be available in Guyana for the first time is stem cell therapy, also known as regenerative medicine. This type of treatment promotes the repair response of diseased, dysfunctional, or injured tissue using stem cells or their derivatives.

“Through our collaboration with Fidelity Healthcare Ltd we will work to harness the therapeutic benefit of autologous bone marrow derived stem cells and Mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of chronic diseases like diabetes, autoimmune diseases, muscular dystrophy, orthopedic disorders, stroke, amyotrophic Lateral sclerosis, pulmonary fibrosis, COPD, and spinal cord injury, among others,” the hospital noted.

Meanwhile, President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, speaking at the launch, said that he is of the strong view that with the resources Guyana has in the health sector, the combined ability of medical talent can match any across the world.

He noted that if medical science is dead, then healthcare and technology would be dead.

President Ali continued: “That is why we now must move to this new level which I intend to elaborate on in the coming days to the establishment of a national medical scientific council.”

Additionally, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, said that stem cells have a beneficial role to play which can be seen from over the past years where stem cells have been used to correct damages to various organs in the body.

“What we are also witnessing is that there is a shift in how we do and how we practice medicine. It is no longer medicine where one size fits all,” he said.

The Health Minister noted that Guyana is now moving to precision medicine where the healthcare providers will now understand more about a person and their genomics, and then based on their genomics, manufacture medicines that are specific to that person, and to be able to fix whatever ills that person may have.

“That is where medicine is going and the area of stem cell. While a lot of research is being done, we’ll see a lot more happening in this area,” he said.

Minister Anthony added: “We, as a government, recognise that this is going to be a potential area for growth and we want to be one of the places in the Caribbean… in Latin America where we can be pioneering this this type of technology.”

According to Dr Anthony, the Human Organ and Tissue Transplant Act 2022 caters to regenerative medicine which include stem cells, and Guyana is hoping to develop in this field.