SEATTLE, October 28, 2002 (lifesitenews.com) – American scientists have developed a way of using cells from umbilical cord blood to grow stem cells that may, with further research, prove as effective as rare sources like bone marrow in treating leukemia.
“Studies suggest that multiplying the number of cells from one [umbilical] cord just by two or three times could be enough to treat an adult,” Irwin Bernstein, who leads a team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the New Scientist magazine. Stem cells from umbilical cords develop faster than those in bone marrow and are less likely to be rejected by the patient's body. The treatment has already been successful in a small number of children with leukemia.
The Seattle team treated the cells with the Delta-1 molecule, yielding a hundredfold increase in the most basic type of self-renewing blood stem cell. The cells went on to successfully replenish both red and white blood cells. But Bernstein cautions that adult treatments could be two or three years away.