There currently is much hype and hope pertaining to stem cell therapy in equine medicine, but not all methods of collecting stem cells are created equal, warn researchers from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal, Canada.

"Even small factors, such as the way that stem cells are separated, can impact the number of cells we collect to ultimately inject back into the horse," explained lead researcher Sheila Laverty, MVB, MRCVS, Dipl. ACVS/ECVS, a professor of equine surgery. "There is an industry-wide need to assess and standardize the isolation of stem cells from horses before more clinical trials are performed on the efficacy of stem cells in horses to compare results obtained in different laboratories."

So instead of focusing on efficacy of stem cell therapy, Laverty and colleagues elected to return to basic science.

"We compared the three currently accepted techniques of isolating stem cells from bone marrow to see which one could be considered optimal," said Laverty