Mark Weinreb, a onetime bagel baron from Long Island, has his sights trained on one of medicine’s hottest commodities: He plans to collect and store adult, or mature, stem cells from people across the country.

With scientists racing to find ways to use stem cells to fight disease, Weinreb heads a new company — Manhattan-based NeoStem — that plans to harvest those cells from the blood of Long Islanders for a $7,500 fee, a plan not without skeptics. NeoStem will store the cells indefinitely in case the donor ever needs them.

Stem cells — capable of growing into various types of tissue — have dazzled medical researchers hoping they can use them to treat problems including heart disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries. As the body’s master cells, stem cells can grow, for example, into muscle or organ tissue.
NeoStem plans to freeze its customers’ stem cells in stainless-steel vats in a Boston facility on the chance that they might someday help resolve a medical emergency. NeoStem’s customers will pay a $63 monthly storage fee.

The company has teamed up with ProHealth, a large Lake Success medical practice that will do the actual stem cell collection using a process similar to that used for blood donations. ProHealth anticipates obtaining a state Health Department license allowing it to collect stem cells by year’s end. The two companies will split the $7,500 fee.

But NeoStem’s plan has met with skepticism in some quarters of the scientific community. One who questions NeoStem’s quest is Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in upstate Garrison.

“The kindest thing one can say about this kind of activity is that it may not harm anyone,” he said. “There is, at best, a faint prospect that it will benefit anyone except the people collecting the fees.”

In research, embryonic stem cells show more potential as disease fighters than the adult cells Weinreb wants to freeze, and have demonstrated a greater ability to grow into many kinds of human tissue. But their use has been largely stalled by anti-abortion groups, which oppose the extraction of stem cells from embryos. Bowing to those objections, the Bush administration has restricted embryonic cell research — leading some scientists to concentrate their research on adult cells.

But last month, in a stunning announcement, two groups of scientists said they had found a way to make ordinary skin cells act like embryonic stem cells — a development that has the potential of making the use of stem cells taken from embryos unnecessary. It also casts a shadow on NeoStem’s plans.

“In our opinion … [the recent findings are] helpful in the sense that it’s important to be able to move the entire stem cell field forward,” he said. NeoStem has purchased the rights to a technology that isolates adult stem cells from bone marrow. These particular cells, Weinreb said, have several properties found in embryonic cells.

Weinreb acknowledges he can’t make guarantees to those who choose to store their stem cells. But he points out that adult cells have shown potential in studies involving diseases such as diabetes and advanced kidney cancer. And doctors already use adult stem cells harvested from the bone marrow and blood to treat some blood cancers and other disorders.

Weinreb, 54, lives in Woodbury and once owned Big City Bagels, a company that had about 55 bagel cafe franchises in Minnesota, Utah, Arizona and California. He says investors have sunk about $10 million into NeoStem, which trades on the American Stock Exchange and already has opened facilities in California, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the past two years, 40 people have paid NeoStem to harvest and store their stem cells, Weinreb said.

Despite misgivings on the part of some experts, Weinreb insists stem cell storage will be the wave of the future. “I don’t think there’s any debate over the efficacy of adult [mature] stem cells,” Weinreb said.

But for now, stem cell research is still unfolding. And some experts say that NeoStem, which began trading at $5 in August and closed Friday at $1.83, is selling little more than maybes.

Dr. David Cooper, chief executive of ProHealth, said the practice — with more than 100 physicians — plans to market NeoStem to its patients. “You can come in and see one of our physicians, and we can procure your stem cells,” Cooper said.

But will storage be useful?

“It remains to be seen,” Cooper said. “We are not telling our patients to do this because there is going to be a cure. We’re just saying there are a number of people who believe stem cells have a possible role in future care.”

While a majority of ProHealth’s partners voted to form a business relationship with NeoStem, some objected, Cooper said. He declined to identify those who objected. “The few concerned didn’t know if ProHealth should be involved in something that wasn’t 100 percent proved to have scientific value,” Cooper said.

Dr. Stephen Forman, director of the division of hematology and hematopoietic cell transplantation at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., questions NeoStem’s mission.

He said studies exist “that make one wonder whether such cells can be used in the reparative process for disease.” In addition, he questioned the need to store stem cells when they could be extracted if the need arises. “It’s another example of another technology being developed for a relatively small portion of the population [who can afford it].”
Forman said NeoStem’s collection process involves using Neupogen, a drug used in chemotherapy, to force stem cells out of bone marrow and into the blood stream. He said the process can cause bones to ache and slightly increases the risk of blood clots.

Still, Dani Braga, who owns the Long Island Fitness and Training health clubs in Woodbury and Westbury, says he plans to have his stem cells frozen. Braga, 31, said he became interested after meeting Weinreb, who works out at Braga’s Woodbury club.

Braga, whose father died of a heart attack at age 56, said he hopes storing his stem cells will help him avoid a similar fate. “I just think it’s promising and preventative medicine,” said Braga, who says the $7,500 fee is worth the gamble. “It seems to me that it’s a great thing to have and potentially it cannot hurt me; it can only help me.”

Weinreb, NeoStem’s president, suggested Newsday contact Dr. Richard Burt, who has spent years researching the use of adult stem cells in autoimmune disorders. Burt, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s medical school and chief of immunotherapy at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said he has no relationship with NeoStem. He spoke with optimism about the use of adult stem cells.

“I never use the word ‘cure,’ but we’ve had some kind of exciting and stunning results,” Burt said. He has reported achieving long-term remissions in some lupus patients and a halt in the progression of type 1 diabetes in some patients.

“The adult stem cell definitely does have clinical applications and uses,” Burt said, while noting the greater potency of embryonic cells. He added that the adult cells are “easy to collect and harvest from a person with little risk.”

Stem cells stored in youth might be healthier than those extracted later in life after exposure to disease and aging, Burt said.

“There’s no doubt that younger cells are always better,” Weinreb said. “But it’s never too late.”

Dr. Robin Smith, NeoStem’s chief executive, said the company is offering “bioinsurance.”

But Murray, the Hastings Center ethicist, said, “Unlike insurance. In insurance, you know what you’re going to get.”

Smith said she’s had her own stem cells collected and suggested they might help her deal with medical problems if terrorists were to release a dirty bomb. Radiation can destroy bone marrow — and stored stem cells might be used to repair radiation damage, she said.

Dr. Johnson Liu, an associate professor at Schneider Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, expressed skepticism about NeoStem’s plans.

“I personally think that it’s premature to have a company that’s going through this whole process,” Liu said. “At the moment, these [predictions for disease treatments] are research items. They are based on protocols that are at most pilot studies.”

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the fee might make limited sense for people with unlimited resources. “If you have $7,500 you were going to spend in Atlantic City, it might better be spent on this,” he said. “Whether they’ll [stored cells] ever be manipulated into useful therapies remains to be seen. People who do this are spinning the health care roulette wheel.”

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