Controversial Stem-Cell Company Moves Treatment Out of the United States
By David Cyranoski,
Nature
| 01. 30. 2013
Celltex to send patients to Mexico.
US citizens who had pinned their hopes on a company being able to offer stem-cell treatments close to home will now need to travel a little farther. Celltex Therapeutics of Houston, Texas, stopped treating patients in the United States last year following a warning from regulators. A 25 January e-mail to Celltex customers indicates that the firm will now follow in the footsteps of many other companies offering unproven stem-cell therapies and send its patients abroad for treatment — but only to Mexico.
The stem-cell treatments offered by Celltex involved extracting adult stem cells from a patient, culturing them and then reinjecting them in a bid to replenish damaged tissue. It had been offering the treatment for more than a year — with one of its high-profile customers being Texas governor, Rick Perry — when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
wrote to the company on 24 September 2012 advising it that the stem cells it harvested and grew were more than “minimally manipulated” during Celltex's procedures. As such, the FDA regarded the cells as drugs, which would require...
Related Articles
By Maia Hibbett, Wired | 09.09.2026
THE INSTAGRAM POST, precision-guided by sex and age, had zeroed in on its target. Yuchen Tu is a conservatory-trained viola player from Chongqing, China, a lover of science fiction, and an aspiring member of the US Army Reserve Officer Training...
By Christina Jewett, The New York Times | 09.14.2026
The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to make artificial intelligence an integral part of medical care in the United States, throwing the resources and support of the federal government into projects that deploy A.I. agents to diagnose and prescribe treatments...
By Terence Keel, Los Ángeles Review of Books | 09.06.2026
This is the 16th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in...
By LJ Dawson, KFF Health News | 08.28.2026
In the summer of 2024, Emilie and Justin Solomon found themselves on a top-secret mission in Greece.
Their family and friends thought the adventure-loving couple was on another jet-setting vacation, but they were keeping something else under wraps: They had...