Ulrich Goldfinger sells Goldic youth

Rich people’s worst nightmare is to be separated from their money, for example by own death. A market which one German anti-aging entrepreneur drove to its golden conclusion. Meet the mysterious man behind the “Goldic” therapy: Auric Goldfinger, pardon, Ulrich Goldfinger, pardon, Ulrich Schneider, pardon, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneider. Who loves gold so much he uses it to sell health and longevity to rich Germans, rich Brits and rich Arabs. And their horses!

It was the British stem cell research professor and medical ethics activist Patricia Murray at the University of Liverpool, who found out about this bizarre German Goldic therapy being sold in a quack clinic in London. The same anti-aging clinic which she previously exposed for peddling quack stem cells cures together with Mark Lowdell, a former associate of Paolo Macchiarini (read here).

Story about an unproven treatment called "Goldic" in this issue of Private Eye. 👇 pic.twitter.com/u5Zh9qXsWB

— Patricia Murray (@PMurray_65) June 28, 2023

The British newspaper Private Eye wrote on 28 June 2023:

“Determined to make a quick buck, Harley Street cosmetic doctor Aamer Khan is back in the dodgy “stem cell” business. Dr Khan’s Harley Street Skin Clinic (HSSC) is now flogging “Goldic” (aka “iRegMed”), an unproven gold-intfused, own-blood therapy. […] Khan made even wilder claims to a prospective patient: “It gets your body working as it did in your 20s. You will find yourself having more energy, you’ll be quicker in the way that you think all those things are going to improve.”

All of which is quackery, says Patricia Murray, professor of stem cell biology at Liverpool University. She told the Eye: “I am very concerned this is being promoted as the ‘next generation of stem cells’. There is no evidence to support these claims. It seems patients are, once again, being exploited for financial gain.” Khan similarly removed website offers for his earlier treat-all “stem-cell” therapies after Prof Murray complained to regulators. […]

Other clinics also offer Goldic, which involves extracting patients’ blood, mixing it with gold particles for 24 hours, then processing it to obtain “serum enriched with growth factors”. As Khan explained to the would-be patient, it’s then injected back into the body intravenously and at the site of any joint damage.
Khan claimed 10,000 patients have been successfully treated with no side effects, as the serum activates “your whole system, including the stem cells in your bone marrow”.

In UK, Goldic is offered not only by Khan’s Harley Street Skin Clinic, but also by other questionable “healthcare providers”: Regenesiss, London Spine Unit, Regenerative Clinic, and The Centre for Joint Preservation.

So what exactly is this Goldic anti-aging therapy, and where does it come from, you wonder?

The original home of Goldic is in the small Bavarian town of Gmund on the shores of the Tegernsee. For your information, this Tegern lake is where the richest of the richest Germans hold their villas, and not only them: the russian oligarch and close associate of Putin, Alisher Usmanov, also has a villa there (presently under sanctions). Gmund on Tegernsee is where our mysterious Prof Dr Ulrich Schneider set up his business in 2004. In fact he set up a private arthritis clinic, negotiated with the Bavarian Christian-Social Union (CSU) elites, despite local protests about frail and sickly old rich people spoiling the holiday experience of the super-rich villa owners. That’s Tegernsee for you.

As for Goldic, the website of the Tegernsee company Arthrogen GmbH (founded by Prof Dr Schneider and a regenerative medicine entrepreneur Joe-Henry Schulte) informs:

“Inflammatory and degenerative diseases are among the most common and among the most important human diseases. Despite years of research, researchers have been unable to clarify the pathogenic mechanisms of these diseases. The treatment of these diseases is therefore mainly symptomatic. Many types of treatments are offered in a one fits all type of therapy. A lot of patients are dissatisfied with these treatments, because often, they end in failure forcing the patient to pursue alternative medical treatments.

This situation was one of the reasons for us to found Arthrogen GmbH as a medical device manufacturer to develop products offering better therapeutic requirements.

Arthrogen focuses its research and development activities on autologous cell therapies for endogenous regeneration. This uses cells that are located in the body and can initiate self-regeneration processes; these can be stem cells, but also tissue-specific progenitor cells, immune cells or their mediators.

Our “Gold-Induced Cytokines” technology and aligned products have a long track record to help doctors to treat patients individually for various diseases. The CE-certified medical devices helping to produce an “Autologous Gold-Activated Serum”  for numerous ailments, including musculoskeletal injuries and serious systemic auto-immune conditions.”

Basically, customers’ blood is incubated with gold dust for 24h at 37°C, then centrifuged, and their serum is injected back into their veins but without the gold, which is apparently sterilised with ethanol and then re-used. Apparently, this is exactly the kind of rejuvenation rich people think fits their status.

At the same address as Arthrogen GmbH at Burgstaller Straße 6 in Gmund am Tegernsee resides another business called “iRegMed”. It is also owned by Prof Dr Schneider and Schulte, the advisory board includes anatomy professor and former vice-rector of the University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Friedrich Paulsen, microbiology professor at the University Clinic Leipzig, Brigitte König, and others you will soon meet. By the way, König’s faculty colleague in Leipzig is a certain stem cell rejuvenation quack Augustinus Bader, a former associate of the murderous trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.

It seems, the purpose of iRegMed is to market the Goldic therapy in Germany abroad to other “health professionals”:

“iRegMed© is a service platform that can offer interested physicians highly innovative forms of treatment in the field of regenerative medicine. […] iRegMed, is also a service provider for intelligent regenerative therapies based on an autologous blood procedure, called GOLDIC (Gold Induced Cytokines).”

You already heard of Goldic salesmen in UK. There was even a failed attempt to get Goldic approved by NIH as COVID-19 therapy: the “Safety and efficacy of Autologous Gold-activated Serum for at risk populations against COVID-19 virus infection – a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial“, proposed by Prof Dr Schneider and his iRegMed, received from the British authorities an “Unfavourable Opinion”.

In Europe, iRegMed lists as collaborators an orthopaedics practice in Innsbruck, Austria, and the Portuguese company Endotécnica – Material Cirúrgico, the latter openly advertises for Goldic therapy for sports injuries. Also three German doctors are listed by iRegMed as Goldic providers, but it is not openly offered on their own practice websites. I couldn’t reach Dr Yusuf Günes, general practitioner in Cologne, because the good doctor was on holidays, but the assistants of Dr Michael Schwalb, internist and acupuncturist in Leverkusen and of Dr Rudolf Polsak, speech therapist and homeopath in Hochheim (between Frankfurt and Mainz) both early confirmed to me on the phone that yes, they do offer the rejuvenation therapy Goldic.

In case you wonder: yes, it is perfectly legal in Germany. As the national authority Paul Ehrlich Institute once educated me in a different case, scientifically unproven experimental human therapies are only regulated inside university hospital settings. Also untested drugs and medical products need approvals from authorities, which can be easily circumvented if patients’ own blood or tissues are extracted, processed with some magic woo, and then re-injected. There, all an enterprising medical quack practitioner with an MD degree legally needs to make German authorities happy is basically just a clean lab (although I am not even sure about that). No ethics votes, no evaluations or approvals for your magic therapy, no oversight by authorities, no nothing. This gaping loophole is for example the foundation of the success story of the anti-aging company from Heidelberg, TICEBA:

Thanks to Germany’s famous obsessive regulations being amazingly utterly absent in regard to private practices, Germany is a bonanza for all kinds of questionable treatments for anti-aging, cancer, diabetes, autism, etc. Even a blood wash for COVID-19. The government is very careful not to meddle with a thriving Mittelstand industry. The German media eagerly advertises for quack enterprises, which is so much smarter than get sued for critical articles.

And in any case, Prof Dr Schneider’s Goldic therapy is based on solid, peer-reviewed science!

Here is a clinical trial published in a somewhat obscure journal CellR4, among its co-authors are the NHS consultant radiologist Kevin Lotzof, plus iRegMed board members: another British doctor named “Professor” Peter Hollands, and the US-American orthopaedics surgeon William D. Murrell. All three sell or advertise for Goldic but declared in that paper to “have no conflicts of interest to disclose.”

U. Schneider , K. Lotzof , W. D. Murrell , E. Goetz Von Wachter , P. Hollands Safety and efficacy of systemically administered autologous Gold-Induced Cytokines (GOLDIC®) CellR4 (2021) doi: 10.32113/cellr4_20214_3132

The clinical study does not say where and when their 55 patients were treated, but informs that

“All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the Ethical Standards of the Institutional and/or National Research Committee(s)”

Without any details this merely means that Prof Dr Schneider himself approved it, I guess?

Raphaël Lévy criticised the study on PubPeer as scientifically unfounded:

“The authors write: “In vitro studies have shown that incubation with gold particles inhibits catabolic factors, increases anti-catabolic and anabolic factors and also increases the level of gelsolin (GSN), which is a key protein in cellular metabolism [16]”. However:

• Reference 16 is a 1987 article which has nothing to do with gold nanoparticles. The gold compound used is a gold salt, therefore with extremely different biological and physico-chemical properties to large gold nanoparticle (or even micro as seem to be used in “Goldic”).
• Reference 16 is a clinical study. There are no in vitro data at all.
• Reference 16 does not mention Gelsonin a single time.

Furthermore, a search for “Gelsolin” and “gold” on web of science finds zero in vitro work supporting the molecular mechanism that is supposed to underpin this clinical trial. Three articles are found that report a link between gold nanoparticles and gelsonin:

1. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tiv.2015.11.003 reports degradation of gelsonin in neutrophils induced by gold nanoparticles.
2. https://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/521207 reports activation in blood horse serum. However, even though there is a claim about gelsonin in the abstract, there are in fact no data on gelsonin in the article.
3. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00264-020-04870-w is another clinical trial by the same group. There is no in vitro work.

It is concerning that therapies are tested on patients in the absence of a scientific rationale and without solid in vitro experimental evidence.”

Interestingly, the paper reported side effects which its authors declared to be mild:

“In the entire cohort, 21 out of 55 patients (38%) reported transient hot flushes and fatigue after the first GOLDIC® injection. These symptoms resolved in all patients within a maximum of 24 hours. Moreover, 10 patients (18%) showed musculoskeletal stiffness and flu-like symptoms following the first GOLDIC® injection; 3 patients (5.45%) showed similar symptoms after the 3rd and 4th GOLDIC® injection, respectively. These symptoms resolved completely within 24 hours. Mild erythema at the injection site was seen in some patients, which resolved rapidly following GOLDIC® injections.”

Now, the CellR4 is published by the Italian publisher Verduci, which previously was exposed a factory of Chinese papermill trash:

In that same papermill-infested Verduci journal, we learn from Profs Drs Schneider and Hollands that Goldic cures hay fever:

U. Schneider , P. Hollands Intravenous gold-induced autologous serum injection therapy (Go ACT®) as a new treatment for seasonal pollen-based allergies European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences (2021) doi: 10.26355/eurrev_202106_26055  

There were 16 patients, treated at undeclared place and time, and without any ethics statement whatsoever. We are informed that “P. Hollands has no conflict of interest” and that

“The study was funded in whole by Arthrogen GmbH, Gmund/Germany.”

The study was likely funded by Prof Dr Schneider’s patients at Tegernsee. Possibly even without their knowledge: it is not clear if these paying customers ever knew they were part of a clinical trial and whether they gave an informed consent for publication of its results.

If you are unconvinced by publication venues, there are more serious journals! Here, in Springer:

Ulrich Schneider , Ashok Kumar , William Murrell , Agnes Ezekwesili , Nagib A. Yurdi , Nicola Maffulli Intra-articular gold induced cytokine (GOLDIC®) injection therapy in patients with osteoarthritis of knee joint: a clinical study International Orthopaedics (2021) doi: 10.1007/s00264-020-04870-w

“During this phase 2a, proof-of-concept (PoC) open label study, 83 consecutive patients that 64 patients met inclusion criteria (mean age: 64.8 years; 89 knees) with radiographically proven KOA, received four ultrasound guided intra-articular knee injections of GOLDIC® at three to six day intervals.”

An official phase 2a clinical trial! Done years ago at Tegernsee:

“Trial registration § 13 Abs.2b AMG Bavaria (Protokol Reg OBB 5-16) (Ref 53.2-2677.Ph_3-67-2)—Date 3/20/2010 retrospectively registered”
“Ethics approval Competent authority of Bavaria authorized the study.”

Retrospectively registered and apparently even approved by an unspecified Bavarian authority? I know that the one-party state of Bavaria suffers from all-pervading CSU corruption, but there should be limits, no?

Actually, there are clues who the competent Bavarian authority is. In this Elsevier journal.

Jessica Feldt , Jessica Welss , Ulrich Schneider , Friedrich Paulsen Gold-based blood serum treatment promotes wound closure of corneal epithelial cell defects in primary in vitro experiments Annals of Anatomy – Anatomischer Anzeiger (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.aanat.2021.151745

The abstract started with:

“Wound healing disorders characterised by impaired or delayed reepithelialisation are a serious medical problem. In the present study, we show that gold-based blood serum therapy is a suitable therapeutic approach”

There is a very usual statement by Prof Dr Schneider, that he “was not involved in the planning of experiments or the analysis of data.” If he says so.

Now, this was the ethics statement:

“Collection of blood samples was approved by the ethical committee of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.”

Reminder: the last author Paulsen is professor and at that time vice-rector of this Bavarian university. Seems we found our competent authority?

And this is not all: yet another hat Paulsen is wearing here is being the Editor-in-Chief of this Elsevier journal (Honestly, I already could guess which name I will probably see when I clicked on the editorial board 😉

In this recent Scientific Reports paper, all authors except Prof Dr Schneider are once again employed by the University Erlangen-Nürnberg:

Jessica Feldt , Anna-Jasmina Donaubauer , Jessica Welss , Ulrich Schneider , Udo S. Gaipl , Friedrich Paulsen Anti-inflammatory effects of an autologous gold-based serum therapy in osteoarthritis patients Scientific Reports (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-07187-3 

“Whole blood samples were collected from healthy controls by medical personnel after their consent […] Whole blood samples were taken from patients by medical personnel after their consent.”

Was it an informed consent? Did the patients know that their blood is being drawn for the purpose of Goldic research and NOT for the purpose of their personal treatment? Is Bavaria worse than Bangladesh, ethics-wise? Professor Paulsen, hello, how is your hypocritical oath doing?

“The ethics committee of the University Erlangen-Nuremberg (60_19 B) approved this study which was made under compliance of the Helsinki Declaration.”

But wait. Unlike the study insinuates, the patients were actually not treated at the Erlangen-Nürnberg University Clinic, but at the Tegernsee practice of Prof Dr Schneider. We know this because Goldfinger warns the readers that he “was not involved in the study design or the performing of experiments” and merely “aqqirated patients and took blood samples“. Bad English his. Also, the iRegMed board member Paulsen again declares “no competing interests.“

Goldic collaborators in Poland however at least registered their phase 4 open label clinical trial with 90 patients with lower back pain (NCT04492774).

Piotr Godek , Beata Szczepanowska-Wolowiec & Dominik Golicki GOLDIC therapy in degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis: randomized, controlled trial Regenerative Medicine (2022) doi: 10.2217/rme-2022-0047

“It turned out that autologous serum GOLDIC administered by epidural injection (into the vertebral canal) showed a stronger and longer-lasting analgesic effect and helped patients maintain better mobility during the 24-week follow-up period.”

The Warsaw-based authors declared to have no conflicts of interests whatsoever, in any form, but an orthopaedics clinic in Warsaw sells Goldic therapy for lower back pain. A coincidence, probably.

Now a study by Prof Dr Schneider and colleagues at the RWTH Aachen University, also in Germany. It was published in a Romanian (!) journal with a disfunctional website and owned by the last author, Elisa A. Liehn, formerly at RWTH, now professor at the University of South Denmark. That sad arrangement was necessary before Paulsen came to iRegMed to open doors, I presume.

Cordes F , Curaj A , Simsekyilmaz S , Schneider U , Liehn EA Anti-inflammatory Gold-Induced Autologous Cytokines treatment triggers heart failure after myocardial infarction. Discoveries (Craiova, Romania), (2017) DOI: 10.15190/d.2017.10 

The funny thing about this paper is that Prof Dr Schneider seems not to have noticed that his own paper proves his Goldic therapy as useless and potentially dangerous, at least for myocardial infarction (MI) sufferers:

Maybe the therapy is dangerous after all? Look how the gold dust is being prepared, according to this Goldic patent registered by Prof Dr Schneider already in 2011:

“The gold particles used were gold powder (particle size 1 μm, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Munich). The gold particles were first sterilized as recommended by the manufacturer: The required amount of gold particles / gold powder, for example 30 mg, was mixed with 1 ml of 70% ethanol, incubated for 10 minutes with gentle stirring (mixer, vortexer), settling after 1 minute centrifuged briefly and then the supernatant removed. Thereafter, the gold particles were redistilled three times with 1 ml of sterile water. washed. After the final wash with final centrifugation and spillage of the supernatant, the gold particles were resuspended in sterile PBS and adjusted to the desired concentration, eg, 60 mg / ml. With constant shaking, 10 μl of the gold particle solution were removed with a pipette and transferred to an S-Monovette neutral / 9 ml (92 × 16 mm) from Sarstedt (REF 02.1726.001). The monovette was first opened in a sterile workbench (screw cap), the 10μl gold particle solution applied to the inner syringe wall and then again locked. The filled monovettes stored at room temperature until used. For use in carrying out the disclosed method, 9 ml of body fluid (eg, blood) was collected into the prepared monovettes and mixed with the gold particle / PBS solution.”

Patients’ blood is then “incubated with these particles at 37 degrees for 24h“. There is a real danger of accidental infection, especially since iRegMed board member Murrel speaks in this video of using a 100 micron filter, utterly useless to remove bacteria:

Never mind. Goldic therapy is popular where gold is particularly valued: in the Emirates. Here is one provider, and here is a brochure:

“Gold as Medicine.
It is one of the oldest medicines in human history. Aurum metallicum, the “Metal of light”. Scientists can now unequivocally explain why the mystical metal has healing properties. […]
The GOLDIC ® Therapy is a form of stem cell therapy,
which activates the existing local stem cells and supports
their differentiation.”

Stem cells even.

Going to Emirates opens unusual business venues. How about an early Goldic study on HORSES, published by our Tegernsee resident Prof Dr Schneider together with a local veterinarian, in a predatory journal by Longdom:

Ulrich Schneider and Georg Veith First Results on the Outcome of Gold-induced, Autologous-conditioned Serum (GOLDIC) in the Treatment of Different Lameness-associated Equine Diseases J Cell Sci Ther (2013) DOI: 10.4172/2157-7013.1000151

“Results: In all 37 cases, a significant reduction of lameness, effusion (joint group) and swelling (soft tissue disorders group) within 3 weeks after treatment (P<0.05) was found. Up to 3 and 6 months after treatment, all horses were free of symptoms. There were no major side effects noted throughout the study.
Conclusions: This study provides positive evidence for the use of gold-induced, autologous-conditioned serum in different equine lameness-associated diseases”

Utterly unsurprisingly, Dr Georg Veith presently offers Goldic therapy for arthritic horses at his neighbourhood horse clinic (translated):

“Goldic® transfers the numerous positive experiences made with gold particles in the treatment of rheumatism patients in human medicine to the therapy of horses. In this way, we have already been able to help about 200 animals here in the Fohlenweide veterinary practice.”

Rich people own horses as status symbol. Super-rich people, especially Arab sheikhs, own super-valuable horses. It is indeed a great market for Goldic which our Goldfinger eagerly exploits, here from 2019:

“Dr Ulrich Schneider was one of our speakers at the Doha Equine Health Event”

But now you wish to know at which university exactly our dear Prof Dr Schneider is professor. I asked him, he didn’t tell me, mentioning trouble with “competitors” as the reason for his refusal to answer any questions by email.

But Private Eye did ask, and then called him a “self-styled “Prof” Ulrich Schneider“:

“He refused to tell the Eye where he was made a professor, but the European networking site for scientists, Researchgate, lists him and his lab “iRegMed” at Germany’s RWTH Aachen University. Except, Aachen says “there is no Ulrich Schneider on our internal lists” and is investigating further. “

Indeed, on ResearchGate Prof Dr Schneider claims that his iRegMed lab is based at RWTH Aachen, where he claims to be (or have been) an associate professor. He claims the same RWTH professorship on his ORCID profile :

“1999-07-01 to 2005-06-30 | Prof.Dr. (Orthopedics)”

Yet Prof Dr Schneider’s own CV makes clear he never was a professor, certainly not at RWTH Aaachen. What he claims in that CV is that after graduating as MD in Heidelberg, he started in 2001 a “Habilitation” in Aachen, while working there as Oberarzt (senior physician) till 2005. Even if true, our Goldfinger doesn’t say if he ever successfully accomplished his Habilitation even. In any case, a German Habilitation used to be nothing else but a former requirement to give lectures at universities and to apply for a professorship. It is otherwise worthless and merely grants you the silly title of Privatdozent (PD). In short, Schneider was never a professor at RWTH. And apparently, nowhere else?

But wait! There is indeed a full professor named Ulrich Schneider at RWTH. For art history, but maybe not everyone will check. Hats off, Goldfinger!

Disclaimer: no, I am not related to Prof Dr Ulrich Schneider.

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