Home › Blog › The World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers Hype Machine

The expressions “go big or go home” and “fake till you make it” really applies to the stem cell wild west. We’ve seen all sorts of examples from Liveyon to CharaCore to IMAC Regeneration Centers, and many others.  Now a company calling itself “World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers”, IMHO earns a spot firmly on that list.

The Press Release

As you know, I often write about what people send me and this week I received this press release:

Wow! The first of 300 stem cell centers? That sure sounds impressive and certainly worthy of a deep dive. The first clinic is in Pittsburgh, which is where we also find our founder.

The Founder

It would be reasonable to expect that the CEO and founder of a stem cell company that has the cash to open 300 sites worldwide would have extensive medical, scientific, or business experience in regenerative medicine. However, if my experience with the stem cell wild west has taught me anything, it’s that the founder of this company could have no such experience. So which is it? Let’s dig in.

The founder is John Scott Genslinger. Who is that? From his Linkedin page, he has many claims to be the absolute greatest in the world at many things. He’s worked as a recruiter for insurance agents, in nutritional supplement and radio ad sales, and the “production and staging” of concerts. Let’s go deeper.

This is from his Linkedin page:

• #1 Business Worldwide Development Specialist-Treatments For Umbilical Stem Cells-Big Daddy/World Wide Stem Cells – has hired JS Genslinger and his incredible team of experts recently to develop relationships between Professional Sports and Umbilical Stem Cell Treatment Facilities Globally. He also represents thousands of Celebrity Personalities.

Huh? The press release above states that Genslinger is the CEO, founder, and owner of World Wide Stem Cells, but here that company hired Genslinger? His job is also to hook athletes up with stem cell clinics? Above it also states that Genslinger also represents thousands of celebrity personalities? Certainly, if that were true the Internet would be littered with evidence of John Genslinger being connected to at least some of these thousands of celebrities? However, I can find no such information online.

Wait, it gets better! Who’s “Big Daddy?” Here’s another entry from the Genslinger Linkedin profile:

• Senior VP Big Daddy Int. LLC-Relationship Director of Sports & Entertainment-Big Daddy has hired JS Genslinger to consult on developing business relationships between collegiate sports, professional sports, celebrity personalities from TV and Movies along with the most famous celebrity musicians and entertainers globally with all the leading Stem Cell Facilities globally.

Huh? So Big Daddy International, LLC must be a big deal athlete talent agency? Nope. A Google search for “Big Daddy International” has no hits for a talent agency or even any company with that name owned by Genslinger, just a smattering of corps and businesses that have used that name. There is an insurance salesman who works with athletes by the name of Rich “Big Daddy” Salgado. However, I can find no link between Salgado and Genslinger. So maybe that’s the “Big Dady” being referred to?

So what is Genslinger’s real claim to fame? The Home Shopping Network where it looks like he was initially a buyer and then the CEO of “Daddy Warbucks” and other companies that he claims he founded with Roy Speer, the founder of the Home Shopping Network. However, when I search for those two names together for all listed companies, I can find no public records of these companies other than the Genslinger Linkedin page:

Whatever these companies were, it doesn’t look like any of them amounted to much.

Working with Celularity?

John Gesslinger’s Linkedin page says this: “With Celularity Inc. in New Jersey being the first facility to use Genslinger and his abilities…”

In fact, there’s a Celularity logo (red dashed lines) in this part of John Genslinger’s Linkedin page:

What is Celularity? A very legitimate cell therapy company engaged in many FDA clinical trials. Why would a company in FDA trials engage a guy like John Genslinger who claims he’s introducing athletes and celebrities to umbilical cord stem cell clinics? As far as I know, Celuraity has no clinics.

I reached out to the Celularity CEO over the weekend and he was kind enough to engage. It sounds like Mr. Genslinger had a meeting with his team, but in no way represents Celularity. 

The Website

The moment you hit the Worldwide Stem Cell Treatment Centers website it states:

Wow! So this clinic, now open in Pittsburgh, represents the “Gold Standard in Regenerative Medicine”? To be able to make that claim, the company should have spent decades and millions to hundreds of millions performing research on the clinical therapies it offers. Surely there is someplace on this website that shows all of the clinical research published by Genslinger’s team? Nope. Not a single study. Hence, “Gold Standard” here may be a bit of a serious stretch.

This is what the website says about its CEO and founder:

“JS Genslinger and his team of Stem Cell Professionals took the Stem Cell Industry by storm in 2019-2020. JS Genslinger is the CEO, Founder, and Owner of World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers.”

Took the world by storm? Huh?

Umbilical “Stem Cells”

We see above that John Genslinger’s company uses “umbilical stem cells”. If you read this blog, you know that this is another exaggeration, as umbilical cord products being sold in the US and that could be used in the Pittsburgh clinic have no living and functional mesenchymal stem cells. Watch my video below to learn more:

So John’s main premise of his clinics offering umbilical cord stem cells is a sham based on the existing peer-reviewed and presented literature.

Hiring a Vein Guy as a “Stem Cell Surgeon”

The biggest problem that non-physician owners have in running these clinics is hiring trained and qualified medical providers. World Wide Stem Cell is no different. Who is the medical director? A stem cell expert who has published dozens of papers on this topic? An orthopedic surgeon who has published research on the use of stem cells to treat orthopedic conditions? Nope. A general surgeon who seems to work in vein clinics:

Does World Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers treat veins? Not according to their website, where they seem to be mostly focusing or orthopedic, aesthetic, and anti-aging medicine. Does Dr. Louis Certo, the Medical Director of Wolrd Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers, have any expertise in stem cells as demonstrated by publications? Nope:

So we have a vein surgeon without any expertise in stem cells who is in charge of being the medical direction behind a chain of 300 medical centers all focused on “stem cell” treatment in the area of orthopedics, aesthetics, and anti-aging. Dr. Certos was trained by Ruben Timmons who was recently featured in another blog. You may remember that Dr. Timmons also had no demonstrated expertise in stem cells, but IMHO did have experience running a Florida pill mill.

The upshot? Will Wolrd Wide Stem Cell Treatment Centers get 300 sites open? Who knows. I can say that there isn’t much expertise here in regenerative medicine, they are not using real stem cells, and IMHO, looking at the virtual companies that point to virtual companies game being played, this all seems to be more vapor than actual reality.

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile