Why Cheongdam Cell Clinic skips cell culture in favour of immediate concentrated cells

In stem-cell treatment, clinics generally choose between two approaches: laboratory cell culture (or cell expansion) to grow cell numbers over several weeks, or using concentrated cells isolated immediately from a tissue sample without culturing. Cheongdam Cell Clinic has chosen the second approach.

The clinic's first stated reason is time. Laboratory culturing takes several weeks to reach the desired cell count, requiring at least two clinic visits — one to collect the sample and another to receive the injection — which is inconvenient for international patients, including those travelling from Thailand.

By using immediately isolated concentrated cells, the clinic states it can complete the entire process — bone-marrow harvest, cell isolation and reinjection — in a single half-day visit. This makes travel planning easier, and the clinic states there are no restrictions on daily life from the day of the procedure.

The second reason relates to quality control. External laboratory culture over an extended period carries some risk of contamination or changes to cell properties. Using immediately concentrated cells reduces the time cells spend outside the body, which the clinic views as a safety advantage.

That said, a limitation of the no-culture, concentrated-cell approach is that the cell yield in each session depends directly on the volume of bone marrow harvested, unlike culturing, which can expand cell numbers further in the lab. Patients with naturally lower bone-marrow stem-cell counts due to age or health status may receive a more limited cell yield.

Academically, both approaches have supporting research in certain contexts, and there is no unanimous conclusion that one produces better outcomes across every indication. The choice depends on each clinic's philosophy and patient profile. Cheongdam Cell Clinic emphasises speed and convenience as the main selling points of its no-culture approach.

For patients weighing a culture-based clinic against an immediate concentrated-cell clinic like Cheongdam Cell, it is worth asking about the expected cell yield, how cell quality is checked before injection, and the treating physician's experience, to make a well-rounded decision.

Regardless of approach, the clinic still notes its standard caution about possible side effects such as swelling, bleeding or infection, since both culture-based and immediate concentrated-cell methods still involve bone-marrow harvesting and reinjection.