Dr. Marc Jeschke and Kaitlin Jeffrey – credit, Hamilton Health Sciences
See that red mark on Kaitlin Jeffrey’s neck below her left ear? That’s some indication of how serious it is to describe the treatment she just finished receiving as revolutionary.
Jeffery’s hair and skin caught fire during a blaze which broke out at a fraternity party she was attending in Toronto.
She was left with 3rd degree burns that threatened permanent scarring and disfiguration.
Doctors at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario, were certain she would require skin grafts and be left to bear the conspicuous scarring therefrom. She was later transferred to the burn unit at Hamilton Health Sciences for surgery.
There, Dr. Marc Jeschke opted for a world-first treatment strategy of using exosomes to heal the burns rather than covering them up. Exosomes are tiny particles released by cells that carry the signal for powerful healing responses. They are usually collected from lab cultured cells, and Jeffery’s burns were so bad she needed a trillion of them.
“My vision for Kaitlin was to avoid skin graft surgery to her face and neck at any cost,” explained Dr. Jeschke, vice president of research and innovation at HHS, burn surgeon and researcher, to CTV.
“You can do the best graft on the planet, but you won’t return the skin to normal. And, for a young person, a skin graft to the face and neck can be absolutely devastating.”
That was iterated in an emergency application to Health Canada to try the exosomes on compassionate grounds. With Jeffery and her parents having signed on to the idea, Health Canada gave a green light, and the injections of exosomes began.
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Clinical trials in humans have had promising results for wound healing, but exosomes for burns have been studied only in animal models. Jeffery was to be something of an animal herself: a guinea pig for exosome-use in humans.
Yet her response to the exosome treatment exceeded anyone’s expectations, and every day, it seemed there was a new person growing from behind the ghastly burns.
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Burned on December 2nd, by April 29th, Jeffery was simply unrecognizable—or rather she was completely recognizable: her face had healed entirely.
She will require skin grafts for the remainder of the scarring on her neck, but the beautiful young woman can look forward to a lifetime of confidant normalcy, while Dr. Jeschke is hoping that the unprecedented success will rapidly accelerate the development of exosome treatment—which is now very expensive—in humans around Canada and the world.
SEE the transformation below…
SHARE This Incredible Result For A Young Woman In Ontario On Social Media…
