Arthritis, sports injuries or scars? These Tri-City natives are offering a new treatment

Back when Jonathan Pasma and Jay Loera were classmates at Kennewick High School, they weren't thinking of opening a medical practice together one day.

But the two hometown friends both became doctors, and they share a passion for not merely treating symptoms, but instead restoring health.

So, along with another longtime Tri-Citian — nurse practitioner Dana Ellis — they started Tri-Cities Regenerative Institute on West Gage Boulevard.

The practice offers several kinds of treatment, including a stem cell therapy.

The treatments can help with everything from arthritis and other issues in the knees, hips, back, neck, feet, shoulders, elbows and wrists, to more cosmetic concerns from baldness to scars and stretch marks, the trio said.

"Our medical system is really good at keeping people alive. We are really good at finding disease. But there’s not a focus on finding health. That’s where we come in," Pasma said. "We want to help people improve their quality of life, improve their function and get them doing the things they want to do."

The therapies offered at the clinic include:

▪Platelet Rich Plasma, which involves injecting the patient's own concentrated platelets to stimulate healing.

▪Prolotherapy, which involves injecting a safe irritant into damaged connective tissue. That therapy "tricks your body into thinking a bomb went off there, and it sends all the body’s healing cells," Pasma told the Herald.

▪BioRenew (PTM) Therapy, which involves injecting an "extracellular matrix" of collagens, growth factors and placental stem cells. The stem cells come from placentas that are discarded after C-sections; they aren't fetal stem cells.

Stems cells are known as "master cells" because they can develop into many different cell types and act as an internal repair system.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says the field of stem cell therapy is promising, but warns patients to be careful and do research.

In May, the agency sought court orders to stop clinics in Florida and California from using unapproved treatments that involved removing fat from patients' bellies, extracting stem cells and then injecting the cells back into the body to repair damage from injury or illness, The New York Times reported.

In some cases, patients were seriously harmed by the treatment.

The stem cell therapy at Tri-Cities Regenerative Institute is a far cry from those kinds of practices, Pasma and his crew said. The BioRenew product used at their clinic is registered with the FDA, and it's safe and effective, they said.

The treatment "has been done hundreds of thousands of times and there’s never been an adverse reaction," Pasma said, adding that, "taking a baby aspirin would probably be more dangerous" than BioRenew.

Pasma has undergone the therapy himself on his thumb and knee, he said.

He and his partners said they're excited to bring regenerative medicine to the Tri-Cities. While some other local practices may have some regenerative offerings, their clinic is the only one in the Tri-Cities that specializes, they said.

Pasma also has a similar practice in Spokane.

He graduated from Kennewick High in 2002 and went onto Whitworth University and then Pacific Northwest University College of Health Sciences.

Ellis attended Liberty Christian School in Richland, graduating in 2005. She worked for eight years as a registered nurse before becoming a nurse practitioner. She has a background in critical care.

Loera, who graduated from Kennewick High in 2003 and went onto the University of San Diego and Medical College of Wisconsin, has a background is in emergency medicine. That helped spark his interest in regenerative medicine.

"I would see a lot of folks who'd come back to the ER multiple times for chronic arthritis knee pain, shoulder pain and whatnot," he said. "(Regenerative medicine) is a way to give them a potential fix to the underlying problem."

Ryan Kiely is the clinic's administrator.

Tri-Cities Regenerative Institute is accepting patients. The therapies generally aren't covered by insurance — at least not now, although the partners said they're hopeful that'll eventually change — and are paid for out of pocket.

For more information, www.tri-regen.com.

This story was originally published June 23, 2018 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Arthritis, sports injuries or scars? These Tri-City natives are offering a new treatment."