"Cellular medicine" can sound like a catch-all buzzword. In this conversation with Mark Anthony, Dr. Steven Levy — Chairman and Study Director for MD Stem Cells — gave it a precise definition instead: using a patient's own cells, drawn from their own bone marrow, to help address disease at the level where it actually starts. Levy and his principal investigator, retinal surgeon Dr. Weiss, run two NIH-registered clinical studies out of Coral Springs, Florida — one in ophthalmology, one in neurology — built specifically around that idea.
Both physicians, Levy was careful to note, are conventionally trained "allopathic" doctors who are not opposed to standard of care and encourage patients to pursue every option available to them. Cellular medicine, in his framing, sits alongside standard treatment rather than in place of it — an additional tool for diseases that have historically had limited options.
Key Takeaways
- Cellular medicine, as Dr. Levy defines it, means using a patient's own (autologous) cells — MD Stem Cells works exclusively with bone marrow-derived stem cells, not fat/adipose-derived ones.
- In animal models, bone marrow stem cells have been shown to fuse with Müller cells in the retina and form new ganglion cells — one reason Levy says bone marrow is better suited than fat tissue to eye and neurological conditions.
- Bone marrow is aspirated from the back of the pelvis under IV sedation, not local anesthetic — Levy said numbing agents like lidocaine can inhibit stem cell performance, so patients are put fully under for the procedure.
- MD Stem Cells runs two NIH-registered, PubMed-published studies listed on clinicaltrials.gov: SCOTS (ophthalmology, now enrolling its second group of patients) and NEST (neurology).
- Levy described visual field and central-vision improvements in glaucoma patients, and improvements in gait and tremor in Parkinson's and ALS patients that in some cases lasted more than a year — always alongside, not instead of, standard medical care.
What "Cellular Medicine" Actually Means
Levy drew a clear line between cellular medicine and regenerative medicine more broadly. Cellular medicine, he said, is the piece of it that specifically uses a patient's own cells to affect other cells in the body that aren't working well — whether that's photoreceptors and retinal neurons in the eye, the optic nerve, or neurons in the brain and spinal cord affected by stroke, Parkinson's disease, ALS, or multiple sclerosis. Even in genetic conditions, he explained, a patient's own cells can still help — the stem cells appear to transfer organelles like mitochondria into struggling cells and can, in animal models, fuse with existing retinal cells to help form new ones.
Asked directly whether a dead cell can be revived, Levy was blunt: no. But a damaged or struggling cell that's still alive, he said, is a different story — that's the population cellular medicine is aimed at helping.
MD Stem Cells works "strictly" with bone marrow-derived stem cells rather than fat (adipose) tissue, a source some other clinics use. Levy said adipose tissue does contain a meaningful number of stem cells, but he considers it better suited to joint disease and dermatologic use like wrinkles. Bone marrow, by contrast, has been observed fusing with Müller cells — a type of immune-adjacent cell in the retina — to form new ganglion cells, the neurons that make up the optic nerve. That's the mechanism his team believes makes bone marrow the stronger choice for the eye and nervous system conditions they treat.
"Cellular medicine is really a part of regenerative medicine in general — the idea of improving the function of cells and organs in the body, improving the ability of the cells and the patient to resist disease, and to improve their condition even in the face of disease."
— Dr. Steven Levy, MD Stem CellsInside the Bone Marrow Procedure — and the SCOTS and NEST Studies
Levy described the bone marrow procedure in detail, in part to address a common patient fear. It's performed by an orthopedic surgeon at a surgical center, drawing marrow from the back of the pelvis — not the hip joint itself — while the patient is under intravenous sedation, the same type of anesthesia used for a colonoscopy. Levy said they deliberately avoid local ("caine") anesthetics like lidocaine, because those numbing agents can contaminate the sample and inhibit how well the stem cells perform afterward. The aspirated marrow is processed in a centrifuge that separates and concentrates the stem cells by weight.
From there, the two studies diverge. In SCOTS (the Stem Cell Ophthalmology Treatment Study, now enrolling its second large group of patients), the concentrated stem cells are handed to Levy's principal investigator, retinal surgeon Dr. Weiss, who delivers them behind and around the eye — both eyes, if both are affected — with any remaining cells given intravenously. In NEST (the Neurologic Stem Cell Treatment Study), stem cells are delivered intravenously and intranasally: into the lower part of the nose, where cells can travel along the trigeminal nerve toward the brain stem, and into the upper part of the nose near the olfactory neurons, where they can reach the brain through small openings in a bone called the cribriform plate. Levy said the bone marrow-derived cells are also able to cross specialized capillaries in the brain that admit them from the bloodstream.
On safety, Levy said the procedure carries no risk of transformation into cancer or tumors, and because patients receive their own cells, there's no infection-transmission risk of the kind associated with donor tissue like cord blood. He described the bone marrow aspiration itself as roughly comparable, risk-wise, to a blood draw — and said the studies have recorded no adverse events or complications to date.
What the Research Has Shown So Far
Levy was direct that dead ganglion cells — the neurons damaged by elevated eye pressure in glaucoma — can't be brought back. But he described measurable improvement in patients whose ganglion cells were damaged, not destroyed: improvements on visual field testing, the exam that maps a patient's field of vision, and in some cases, improvement in central visual acuity as well.
In neurology, Levy described improvements in gait and tremor among Parkinson's and ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) patients, calling the changes real but not permanent — though he said they've in some cases lasted well past a year. He framed the treatment as a potential middle step for Parkinson's patients whose levodopa is no longer fully effective but who aren't yet candidates for deep brain stimulation surgery — an addition to standard care, not a substitute for it. He also mentioned a case report on Alzheimer's disease, presented at an Alzheimer's conference roughly a year prior, that the team is working to publish.
Levy pointed to MD Stem Cells' publication record — multiple papers listed on PubMed, the National Institutes of Health's index of vetted medical journals — as central to how the studies are conducted and evaluated, alongside their registration on clinicaltrials.gov.
How Patients Find and Access the Studies
MD Stem Cells treats patients globally, Levy said, with many finding the program through clinicaltrials.gov, a referring physician, or their own research into published papers — often, he noted, initiated by an adult child researching options for a parent. Contact starts by email rather than phone, since eligibility decisions require reviewing the patient's actual exam records and imaging; Dr. Weiss makes the ophthalmology eligibility decisions, and a neurologist's exam informs the neurology decisions. Patients who move forward also need medical clearance — an EKG, chest X-ray, and labs — before the procedure is scheduled, since it's performed under anesthesia at a surgical center. In the United States, treatment is done in Coral Springs, Florida; MD Stem Cells also treats international patients, primarily from Europe and the surrounding region, at a partner hospital in Dubai.
