HEALTH & MEDICINE UMBILICAL CORD BLOOD OFFERS HOPE TO BONE
MARROW TRANSPLANT PATIENTS By Priya Shah article was published
in THE WEEK and DOWN TO EARTH A team of biologists at the Tata
Memorial Centre's Cancer Research Institute in Mumbai, has
developed a technique that may soon offer patients an option to
the invasive, expensive and often precarious procedure of Bone
Marrow Transplantation (BMT). Using a discarded and easily
available tissue - the umbilical cord blood of new-borns - the
team headed by Dr. S. G. Anand Rao, has designed a simple, but
ingenious process to harvest and store "pluripotent stem cells"
from this source. "Stem cells" are the "master" or precursor
cells, also present in bone marrow, that carry the genetic
blueprint for generating all essential blood components like red
cells, white cells and platelets by a process known as
"haematopoiesis". They have an amazing potential to proliferate
and self-renew, a feature crucial for a lifetime of blood-
regenerating capacity. Human umbilical cor