Online Family Magazine

We talk about stem as a promise for medicine of the future. But they are now ten years that these progenitor cells, taken from umbilical cord blood, is stored and used for treating leukemia. The transplantation of cord blood is an alternative to more widespread marrow transplant. With three advantages: there are more likely to find a compatible donor, the levy is painless and blood can be stored at one hundred and ninety-six degrees below zero even for a decade.

Not always, however, the mother is willing to donate the doors open in front of him. It must first go to a hospital enabled. In Italy there are over one hundred rooms childbirth ready to collect blood placenta. When the cord has been cut, the blood that are left inside is squeezed into a bag. From here is sent to a bank, where it is analyzed and stored. The operations analysis and control should be made in short notice (within 36 hours from the levy) and require about a day’s work in the laboratory. When a bank is congested, or in the closing days workday, you may not be able to receive other donations. Despite having chosen a hospital enabled and having all the requirements to donate, a mother is then faced with a refusal for technical reasons. The amount of stem contained in a given is not very high. It is generally sufficient only for individuals around fifty kilos of weight, mainly children.

In Milan-Italy, where in 1993 was established the first placental blood bank, is studying a technique to multiply the stem. These cells are like sprouts, ready to develop, differentiate and then blossom as soon as you need them. In a patient suffering from leukemia diseased blood cells are the first killed all with radiotherapy. Then takes placental blood transfusion, whose stem develop and go to replace the population destroyed. To cope with the scarcity of these cells to the hospital Maggiore in spring 2000 was first founded Cell Factory in Italy. The “Factory of cells”, is a laboratory where you try to reproduce the stem without them differentiate (ie: become adult), using substances called cytokines.

Paolo Rebulla is responsible for the Cell Factory, director of transfusion centre and immunology of transplants the hospital Maggiore and president of Grace Network, which collects seven of the placental blood banks in Italy. “Today - says - in our country - are preserved more than 18 thousand units of blood. Once taken delivery room, these units must be analyzed. It counts the number of cells that contain and determine the compatibility characters, which All are six. In the transplantation of marrow donors and recipients, to be compatible, they must have all six characters equal. If the doctor decides to proceed with a placental blood transfusion enough that are equal five, sometimes four characters ” . Banks worldwide are networked with each other. If a patient needs a donation, the tam part on the Internet and everyone is ready to divest a unit compatible. “The pockets preserved worldwide - explains Rebulla - are 150 thousand. It is very much that a patient can not find a unit of blood at least partially compatible.”