Midtown Stem Cell Clinic Scammed Patients, Attorney General Says

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — New York State Attorney General Letitia James is suing a Midtown Manhattan stem cell clinic for allegedly scamming patients into believing the clinic could cure them of diseases such as Lupus and ALS through misleading advertisements.

Park Avenue Stem Cell is accused of charging patients nearly $4,000 for treatments while giving off the impression that patients' stem cells could be used to cure them of a wide range of ailments, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday. While stem cells have been identified as having potential for future medical uses, they currently are not known to cure any of the ailments advertised by the for-profit clinic and its managing doctor Joel Singer, James said in a statement.

"Misleading vulnerable consumers who are desperate to find a treatment for serious and painful medical conditions is unacceptable, unlawful, and immoral," James said in a statement.

The clinic advertised on its website that its treatments could "improve" or "treat" conditions such as urological disease, erectile dysfunction, neurology disease, cardiac/pulmonary disease, autoimmune conditions and orthopedic conditions, according to the attorney general's lawsuit.

In addition to providing the sick with false hope, many of Park Avenue Stem Cell's treatments flaunted federal regulations. Stem cell treatments are regulated heavily by the Food and Drug Administration, which only allows a limited number of procedures using blood-forming stem cells derived from cord-blood. At Park Avenue Stem Cell, treatments were done using cells taken from patients' adipose tissue, or fat.

Doctors at the clinic would extract patients' adipose tissue, turn the tissue into a product called "stromal vascular fraction" containing stem cells and then inject the product back into the patient, according to the attorney general's lawsuit. Patients were under the belief that they were participating in a "patient-funded" research study, and some were told that multiple treatments were necessary, according to the lawsuit.

The for-profit clinic was affiliated with the California-based stem cell corporation Cell Surgical Network, which was sued by the FDA in 2018 for administering unapproved stem cell treatments, James said.

"We will continue to investigate these types of clinics that shamelessly add to the suffering of these consumers by charging them thousands of dollars for treatments that they know are unproven," James said in a statement.

Read the AG's full lawsuit below: