Save your stem cells; save a life

Story : Marie Moon   
Photography : Nakarin Banjerdjin

My friends welcomed a beautiful baby girl last November at the Bangkok Hospital Phuket. Baby Elizabeth’s arrival potentially brought a priceless gift; stem cells collected from her umbilical cord. Thanks to modern medical science, and Thailand’s active role in cord blood stem cell research, baby Elizabeth may one day just save a life.

Stem cells are like the body’s master template; able to create all other tissues, organs and systems in the body. They can be injected into an area which has been damaged by trauma or disease, and the stem cells are able to fix the problems by generating new healthy tissue.

MD, PhD and Lecturer in Endocrinology, Dr. Kostas Papadopoulos is Chief Operations Officer of THAI StemLife, Thailand’s first and largest private stem cell bank. A staunch supporter of all forms of ethical stem cell research, he speaks of stem cells as though each one was a tiny genius. “We do not as yet fully understand how stem cells do what they do but we are coming closer. We can’t yet tell them exactly what to do or how to do it. They just go in and know how to fix the problem. Today 72 different diseases of the bone marrow can be treated using stem cells.” Major advances have also been made in treating many forms of cancer, immunodeficiencies, inherited metabolic disorders, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and many more of mankind’s most serious illnesses.

Dr. Kostas explained, “Stem cells are not a new discovery. Bone marrow transplantations, which are the same thing, have been occurring for decades. It’s the sources of stem cells and the applications that change. First we only knew about stem cells in the bone marrow. Then in 1977 an Australian scientist discovered GCSF, a process in which the bone marrow is stimulated into making stem cells and sending them out into the peripheral blood. This discovery has made painful bone marrow transplants a thing of the past. Now you lie down and watch television while a special machine painlessly collects the stem cells from your peripheral blood. Finally, we can get stem cells from the blood in the umbilical cord and placenta after a baby is delivered.”

The detection of umbilical cord blood (UCB) stem cells has had great impact on all areas of research. To understand the true value of UCB stem cells you need to first understand why we die. As Dr. Kostas illustrated, “There is something in our DNA called a telomere; it’s the end part of the DNA. Every time our cells divide and the DNA divides itself, there is a loss of information, so the telomere and its enzyme, the telomerase, go in and fills in the blanks. When we are born we have a very long telomere and it shortens as we age. We eventually reach a point where our telomere is so short that it is not able to fill in that loss of information resulting in the death of the cell. This is why we die. If you keep your stem cells at age 0, or age 30, or 60, the stem cells have the telomere that corresponds to that age and the new tissues that those stem cells will make will have that age and its corresponding telomere length.”

It’s not science fiction anymore; if you take your 30-year old stem cells and inject them into your heart at 60, that new heart tissue will be that of a 30-year old. This, Dr. Kostas confirmed, “is proven. Stem cells from the umbilical cord are totally na?ve and versatile.”

It is also important to recognize that if one of the parents or siblings develops some form of leukemia or a metabolic disease, there is a 1 in 4 chance that the baby’s cord blood stem cells will be a match to the patient’s HLA (human leucocyte antigen;  like a serial number for your DNA). Among the general public, your chances of finding a match are dramatically reduced to 1 in 50,000. Those numbers become even more dramatic when it concerns children of mixed race (Asian-Caucasian); less than 3% of the cord blood stem cells available in public banks come from mixed race individuals, making it extremely difficult to find a match for them.

The collection of cord blood stem cells poses no threat to baby or the mother, usually taking only 5 minutes after birth. When the baby is born and the cord and placenta are delivered, the doctor uses a needle to pierce the blood vessels on the cord, allowing the blood from the cord and placenta to flow freely into a blood bag. The amount of blood varies between 80-180ml depending on size and sex of the baby, the term of pregnancy and also the capacity of the doctor to collect it. The blood is then taken to a laboratory where within hours the stem cells are collected and stored in a cryogenic tank at -196? Celsius. Once frozen, the stem cells remain undisturbed until they are needed to save a life.

Dr. Kostas said, “Once you bank the stem cells they are your property entirely, to be used only by you when you need them. It’s like a safe deposit box; no-one can access your stem cells without your permission. There are laboratories around the world that have kept stem cells for over twenty years. Every year they take small samples out and check them for viability. Today we have evidence that stem cells can be successfully stored for over twenty-one years.”

For parents who are interested in having their baby’s cord blood stem cells kept, Dr. Kostas advises they go to the company that they want to know about, and ask lots of questions. “Ask: How many samples have you collected? What is your contamination rate? Have you ever used any of the samples? Do you have accreditation? Do you have any state institutions behind you? Do you have specialist doctors working with you? What guarantee do you give me that my stem cells will be kept alive? What is your ongoing research? Ask to see proof of what people are talking about!”

He also warns not to believe everything you read about stem cell research, “Whatever treatments, whatever miracles you hear about with stem cells, it’s from baby stem cells collected from the umbilical cord blood or from peripheral blood, not embryonic stem cells.” There has been much controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research. In this process embryos are grown in a lab to five days old and then harvested for stem cells. This results in the death of the embryo and raises ethical and moral red flags but more importantly as Dr. Kostas highlighted, “the main issue with embryonic stem cells is that they can cause teratomas! People get caught up in the moral and ethical issues but these are secondary and can be solved. The fact is, if you take embryonic stem cells and inject them into a human, you cannot control them; they are too potent and turn into embryonic teratomas. Embryonic stem cells can be harmful and we can’t control them so we don’t want to use them. Then of course is the issue of tissue matching; nothing is better than your own! If it is not your own your body will reject it!”

Currently stem cells are primarily used in transplant medicine to regenerate a patient’s bone marrow, blood and immune system when those do not function properly or after they have been treated with chemotherapy or radiation to destroy cancer cells in the bone marrow, but new applications are being discovered every day. Dr. Kostas demonstrated, “Now in the US children are being treated for Type 1 Juvenile diabetes using their own cord blood stem cells. We are in the process of finding out how the stem cells do it; they seem to be able to go into the pancreas and regenerate the cells that produce insulin. We at THAI StemLife have also seen similar improvements in the diabetes patients that had their diabetic foot ulcers treated with their own peripheral blood stem cells. Then, there was a report last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association about a Brazilian group that used adult stem cells to change the bone marrow in 15 patients with Type 1 Juvenile diabetes; in 13 of the 15 patients the diabetes disappeared”.

Dr. Kostas’ research, that in December 2006 received the “Top Innovation of Year 2006 award” from the Thai Ministry of Science and Technology is primarily involved with diabetes.

He continued, “Consider this: using a patient’s own stem cells, diabetic ulcers can be healed within 120 days, not only that but the disease-damaged blood vessels that caused the problem are replaced by new ones, meaning no more ulcers.”

Dr. Kostas declared, “There are ethical concerns with cord blood stem cells: it is unethical to throw it away! If you don’t want to keep it, then donate it; it could save someone’s life!” 

For more information visit www.thaistemlife.co.th

Tropical Living: July 2007, Volume 7 Issue 2

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