The birth of modern day fresh cell therapy occurred in 1931 in Switzerland. Prof. Dr Paul Niehans (1882-1971) a Swiss physician, who already had a reputation for successfully transplanting animal glands and organs into human patients, was called in to assist a surgical emergency. During an operation on a patient’s thyroid gland, a colleague had accidently removed the parathyroid glands.
The surgeon requested that Prof. Dr Niehans perform a parathyroid transplant to save the patient’s life. On arriving at the hospital however, the patient’s condition had deteriorated so badly that a transplant could not save the patient, there was not enough time.
Instead, Prof. Dr Niehans cut the animal parathyroid gland into very small pieces (to retain the cells intact rather than crushing it which would destroy the cells) and once mixed with a saline solution, injected the mixture into the fatally ill patient.
The results were instantaneous – the patient’s severe convulsions ceased and her condition rapidly improved. Prof. Dr Niehans assumed that the healing effect would be short lived and that the treatment would need to be repeated, but that was not needed. The patient lived on for another 25 years with no ill effects from the unusual cell therapy.
Prof. Dr. Niehans became known as the father of modern day fresh cell therapy or live cell therapy. During his career,Prof. Dr. Niehans had successfully administered Cell Therapy to thousands of patients worldwide for more than 30 years. Emperors, crowned heads of state, politicians and movie stars were among his famous patients of whom the most notable was Pope Pius XII who inducted him into the Papal Academy of Science and at that time making him the second to receive such an honour after Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.