Published on August 23, 2005
Many couples are having stem cells from their baby’s umbilical cord stored away to possibly help treat future illnesses
The country’s first private company to offer a storage service for the stem cells taken from new-born babies recently opened to offer a new kind of health insurance for individuals with faith in the potential of biotechnology, and the finances to back it up.
The stem cell bank has been set up in anticipation of future scientific breakthroughs in the area of stem cell technology, which scientists hope to develop to make the repair of organs and tissues a possibility. “Doctors informed me that the stem cells [of my son] could be used to treat a number of diseases that he might suffer from in the future,” said former Miss Thailand Ornanong Awakul, who decided to store core blood stem cells from her first son with Thai Stem Life. Thai Stem Life is a private company that was established by 25 doctors from various hospitals and provides medical services related to stem cell applications. As the first service that the company has developed, the stem cell storage facility also makes it the first private company to offer such a service in the country. The other stem cell storage facility in the country, established by the government four years ago and operated by the Thai Red Cross, already has 60 clients. Clients of the stem cell bank deposit stem cells from the umbilical cord of their new-born infants. The stem cells can then be withdrawn when their child needs them, which could put an end to diseases that could be cured by stem cell transplants in the future. Pol Maj-General Dr Jongjate Aojanepong, head of the Police Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and a founder and shareholder of the company, said the bank represents the first step in the stem cell therapy business. “We initially operated the bank as a collection of raw materials for the application of stem cell therapy in the future,” he said. Jongjate did not offer an exact numbers of clients, but said, “They are all relatively wealthy.” Vichai Sittinavavit, a pharmacist whose first daughter was conceived with the help of artificial reproductive technology (ART) and was born two weeks ago, is one of the more recent clients of the stem cell company. Vichai’s wife suffers from hematopoietic disorders that are notoriously difficult to treat but have already been found to respond to stem cell therapy. “It is like buying health insurance for my daughter,” said Vichai. “We don’t know what is going to happen in the future. Moreover, the price [of the stem cell storage service] is not too high. In fact it is cheaper than my car insurance.” Ornanong found out about the stem cell storage service from the hospital that took care of her throughout her pregnancy, while the Sittinavavit family received the information from a brochure at Jettanin Hospital, the private hospital which provided them with the ART. Jongjate is also the CEO of Jettanin hospital. It took the couple less than a week to make the decision to store their child’s stem cells at the bank. The blood collecting process cost Bt30,000 and there is an annual maintenance fee of Bt6,000. On the child’s scheduled delivery date, a team of scientists from the company attends the hospital to collect a blood sample from the baby’s umbilical cord. The stem cell is then extracted from the blood and kept in a frozen tank of liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. According to Jongjate, the cells can be kept in this way indefinitely. Dr Kostas Papadopoulos, an executive board member of Thai Stem Life, said only about 200 million to 1 billion stem cells can be collected from an umbilical cord. This amount, he said, is not substantial enough to use once a child weighs more than 25 kilograms. The client is therefore advised to have more stem cells collected if he or she wants to ensure future health, said Kostas. Kostas added that stem cells could be extracted from adolescents’ blood samples but that the cells from adolescents may have less potential than those found in umbilical cord blood as the cells are already mature. “To ensure the highest efficiency, the number of stem cells has to be added to when the client grows up,” said Kostas. The principle of collecting umbilical cord blood stem cells to secure the health of individuals is actively endorsed by the Thai Red Cross Society (TRCS)’s National Blood Centre. However, there are some points of concern. “It is just a new type of life insurance, you have to pay the monthly or yearly premium but the fact is not all people will suffer with diseases that have to be cured with stem cells. If you don’t have the savings to cover it, it doesn’t really make sense to invest in such a service,” said Dr Rachanee O-charoen, director of the centre which has also operated the umbilical cord blood stem cell bank since 2002. Rachanee said the clients of the TRCS’s stem cell bank have to pay similar prices to those at the privately run stem cell bank service. “We don’t do any marketing or promotion. We only encourage those who are our blood donors and don’t have economic problems to consider storing their babies’ stem cells,” she said. Rachanee also encouraged the general public to store their infants’ cord blood stem cells to create a national pooled resource. Unlike the storage of individual stem cell banking, the pooled system involves a donation system where the cells can then be used for any patient whose hematopoietic antigen is a perfect match with the antigen of the donated stem cells. At present there are about 260 samples of cord blood stem cells donated as pooled resources in the TRCS system. “If you or your baby don’t need them [the cord blood stem cells], at least it might be useful for others,” said the doctor. Rachanee added that she did not want the general public to spend too much money on a technology whose application is still effectively a dream. Pennapa Hongthong The Nation ------------------------------ Cells that can be anything you want them to A stem cell is a “naive” cell whose function has not been programmed yet. There are two kinds of stem cells: embryonic stem cells, which have the full potential to differentiate into specialised cells that form body parts, and adult stem cells, which are likely to have a more limited potential to form tissues and organs. An embryonic stem cell is a stem cell derived from an embryo. To utilise embryonic stem cells, an embryo must be terminated. Research on embryonic stem cells is therefore forbidden in many countries due to the moral dilemma of using aborted foetuses. But scientists in many countries, including South Korea, Japan, Germany, France and Australia, are still rapidly pioneering the new biotechnological frontier. Adult stem cells, sometimes known as somatic stem cells, can be extracted from human donors of any age. Stem cells can be found in every tissue and part of the body, including the brain, skin, fat, blood, bone marrow, umbilical cord and nerves. The primary role of adult stem cells in a living organism is to maintain and repair the tissue in which they are found. Medical scientists first discovered and utilised adult bone-marrow stem cells about four decades ago. However, bone-marrow transplants have so far only been effective for patients with hematopoietic diseases: thalassemia, leukaemia, lymphoma, primary immune deficiency and aplastic anaemia. Medical scientists in many parts of the world are therefore working hard to find ways of constructing tissue and organs using stem cells, with the ultimate goal of being able to repair – or even entirely rebuild – new tissues and organs. Research on stem-cell-therapy treatments for a number of diseases is currently being conducted around the world. Those diseases include heart disease, rheumatoid disorders, Parkinson’s and diabetes. Some countries are already claiming to have run successful clinical trials. Brazil claims to have measured an increase of blood-vessel cells in the heart of a patient who received stem-cell therapy. However, there is as yet no scientific confirmation of the ability of stem cells to increase blood-vessel cells or effectively treat patients with heart conditions.
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