Use placenta to save people

Umbilical stalks cut from newborn umbilical cord about 1cm in diameter, average length of 50-60cm. The above placenta segment after extraction, separation will yield about 24ml of umbilical cord blood, with 900 million stem cells. Thereby, it can be used to help patients who treat hereditary, congenital anemia and malignant diseases of hematopoietic organs.

The umbilical cord is incurable

Separation of umbilical cord blood stem cells from the placenta at Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital.

According to Dr. Nguyen Tan Binh, Director of Hospital (BV) of Blood Transfusion and Hematology in Vietnam, malignant diseases such as leukemia leukemia (ALL), chronic myelogenous leukemia Calculation (CML), leukemia (NHL), and thalassemia (collectively referred to as anemia) have been replaced by bone marrow transplantation, peripheral blood stem cells and cord blood stem cells.

In the first two methods, patients receive hematopoietic cells of people of the same blood or people with similar blood.

Therefore, the above method is difficult to find suitable people. The way to transplant umbilical cord blood stem cells has the advantage of being more proactive about the supply and easily selecting the gene.

Until now, the City Blood Transfusion and Blood Transfusion Hospital has successfully performed 9 umbilical cord blood transplants. In which, 5 cases were taken from umbilical cord blood stem cells from BV's blood bank and 4 cases were taken from Tokyo (Japan).

The patients before transplanting will destroy the marrow with radiation or chemicals, then transplant hematopoietic stem cells. The advantage of this method is the length of hospital stay for preventive treatment only 6 to 8 weeks. After that, the patient can be treated for another 6 months at home.

Dr. Binh said: 'The cost of cord blood stem cell transplants is still quite high, about 300 million VND. This is a large amount for poor households. Besides, the stem cell sample is not large enough to meet the needs of patients. Another difficulty is that cord blood stem cell transplants are only available to children weighing less than 30kg. Because of an infant's umbilical cord, after extracting, about 900 million stem cells are extracted, only enough for the number of transplanted cells for people weighing less than 30kg. '

Umbilical cord blood bank - a source of future healing

Storing umbilical cord blood stem cells at Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital.

From the results achieved, the Ministry of Science and Technology decided to build 'Southern Umbilical Stem Cell Bank and Human Therapy Application' until 2012.

According to Dr. Binh, to have a sufficient cord blood cord bank to meet, there must be more than 10,000 sample units. Currently, the hospital can store 1,800 standard samples.

It is expected that after the new facility of the hospital will operate (in the second quarter of 2007), there will be an additional storage room with a capacity of about 3,600 samples, this figure will only reach about 50% of storage requirements.

Umbilical stalk storage does not affect the health of mothers and babies. However, according to the old concept, the " burial, cutting of the navel " helped ward off evil spirits, and marked a new life for the children, thus affecting the collection of stored umbilical cord.

In addition, the funding for building sample archives is also huge. Samples of umbilical cord blood stem cells must be kept in the freezing environment of liquid nitrogen, minus 1960C can be preserved well for 20 years.

The screening, extraction, separation of an initial cord stem sample also cost more than 10 million. ' These are the difficulties that the umbilical cord stem cell bank has encountered recently. Therefore, although effective, the number of cord stalk samples is not much to meet the needs of the people. In the future, however, scientific advances will help to multiply cells or transplant several different cord blood stem cells into large numbers, thereby allowing transplantation for many patients without restriction. about weight 'Dr. Binh evaluated.

LE QUANG TRONG