EN
“Stem cell therapy” is a phrase that promises everything at once: to restore a joint, to give movement back, to rejuvenate the skin, to help where nothing else has. The trouble is that two very different things live under the one name. One is a routine, tightly regulated method that has been used in Germany for decades. The other is a set of commercial offers about which German regulators warn patients directly. The difference between them is worth understanding before any money changes hands.
What is genuinely proven here
Stem cells have one proven field, and it is a very specific one — transplantation of blood-forming cells in diseases of the blood and bone marrow: leukaemias, lymphomas, myeloma, aplastic anaemia and a number of inherited disorders. The cells are taken either from the patient and returned after high-dose chemotherapy (autologous transplantation) or from a matched donor (allogeneic). This is heavy treatment with real risks, and it is prescribed not “for restoration” but on the strict indications of a haematologist.
The scale can be seen from the German transplant registry (DRST): cumulatively it records more than 88,000 autologous and almost 70,000 allogeneic transplants, as well as more than 3,600 cell therapies of the CAR-T type. The arrangements are strict: to perform allogeneic transplants at all, a German hospital must carry out at least 40 such procedures a year — a minimum volume set by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) precisely because infrequent practice is dangerous here.
Where the field has moved in recent years
The real movement is happening not in cosmetic medicine but where transplantation meets genetics. CAR-T means that the patient’s own immune cells are taken out, reprogrammed in the laboratory and returned; such products are already registered for particular lymphomas, leukaemias and myeloma. In February 2024 the European Commission for the first time authorised a product created by genome editing with CRISPR: in it the patient’s own bone marrow stem cells are altered so that they again produce working haemoglobin — for severe sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia, from the age of 12.
That is the real leading edge: narrow indications, years of clinical trials, authorisation by a regulator, an enormous price and — importantly — a clear procedure of accountability if something goes wrong.
And joints, backs, rejuvenation?
Here the picture is different. Injections of cell-based and “autologous” preparations into a joint, into the spine, into the skin are widely sold, but there is still no convincing evidence that they restore destroyed cartilage or replace an operation. Claims such as “a complete absence of side effects” or “regeneration of damaged tissue” describe not the results of studies but advertising copy. Some of the phrases that turn up in such material are simply wrong medically — for instance, that centrifuging blood “destroys cancer cells”.
In the European Union preparations made from living cells are classed as advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMP), and only the Paul Ehrlich Institute may authorise them for the market in Germany. In March 2025 that institute, together with the European Medicines Agency, issued a direct warning: unauthorised cell preparations are being actively promoted through websites and social networks, often without evidence of efficacy or safety.
How to tell one from the other
The regulators have listed the signs by which an offer should be considered doubtful. An experimental method is offered outside a clinical trial. The product has neither European registration nor a national authorisation. A cure for a serious disease is promised without reference to published data. The treatment is expensive and is covered by no insurer at all. And all the information about the method exists only on the seller’s website or in social media — but not in professional guidelines.
The practical conclusion is simple. If a blood disease is at issue, ask about the transplant centre, its annual volume and its protocol. If you are offered cells “for arthrosis”, “for ageing” or “for everything at once”, ask for the product’s authorisation number and for the publications the method rests on. The absence of a clear answer is informative in itself.
This material is for information only and does not replace a consultation with a doctor. Whether treatment is possible, what it will involve and what it will achieve can be determined only after an examination at the clinic in person.