What are the different types of stem cell therapy?

Stem cell therapies can be categorized into two main types – those that are approved by the FDA and those that are not FDA-approved. 

The FDA has very rigorous standards and only grants approval after substantial research and testing has been performed and the procedure has been found to be safe. Currently, there are only very few stem cell therapies that the FDA has approved of. The most common FDA-approved stem cell treatment is the blood stem cell transplant procedure. In this procedure, patients with blood cancers such as leukemia are treated with blood stem cells after chemotherapy, a procedure that attacks destructive cancer cells. The healthy blood stem cells proliferate and grow healthy tissue, which replaces the damaged tissue.