Feb. 9: The public stem cell bank inaugurated by the Jeevan foundation on Monday signed an MoU with the Indo-Japanese Nichi-In center for regenerative medicine, to jointly conduct clinical research on stem cell therapy.

Dr Saranya Narayan, medical director of Jeevan Stem Cell Bank, said: “In the past few years, umbilical cord blood cells were used mainly to treat children with blood cancer and thalassemia.

Each unit of cord blood contains around 500 million cells, which is sufficient dosage for a child of 25 to 30 kg weight.

As treatment for an adult would require over 500 million cells, there is a compelling need to increase the number of cells in each unit of stem cells.

This process, called expansion, is done in the laboratory. The project will use NCRM’s expertise in nanotechnology and tissue engineering.”

NCRM director Dr Sam-uel Abraham said, “With such accomplishment, inste-ad of one unit of cryopreserved cord blood stem cell being used for one patient, we could use it for more than one patient or to the same patient several times as deemed necessary.”