Stem Cell Banking – A New Approach Towards Saving Lives
Stem cell banking is a procedure of gathering, collecting, and storing potential stem cells that can be life-saving for future use in regenerative medicines and therapies. With the capacity to create various tissue and blood cells, stem cells recreate and protect the body from the inside. In case of diseases where a medical condition or disease can affect the cell tissue, the therapy of stem cells can regrow the damaged tissues, treat the diseases, and repair the organs.
Cord tissues, dental tooth pulp, and cord tissues are high sources of these outstanding cells. At present, cord stem cells can treat more than 85 diseases, including anemia, bone marrow cancer, leukemia, and lymphomas. Additionally, stem cell therapies are also used in different clinical trials. Stem cell banks offer various opportunities to the parent to cryogenically freeze the valuable cells for more than 25 years, ready to use whenever required. The processes that are involved in banking are safe, risk-free, and non-invasive. One out of three people in the world is taking benefit of this process at some point in their life.
Different Types of Stem Cell Banking
Stem cell banking is usually of two types. They are as follows.
- Cord Blood Banking
According to scientists, industry experts, and doctors, cord blood banking plays a significant role in regenerative medicine’s future. It will soon offer different therapies related to the diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. It can also help grow an entire organ as the stem cells present in the baby cord are unique. They will be the best match for the baby and include 25% chances of matching with his/her sibling. Thus you do not have to wait to find the most suitable donor in the future if you need it. There will also be no fear of the body rejecting the stem cells. But you can bank the cord blood of your baby only on the day when they were born.
How to Store the Stem Cells?
The science relevant to cord blood banking is complicated; however, storing the stem cell is very simple. They are as follows.
• After giving birth to your child, a nurse or a doctor will extract the blood sample and place it inside the collection kit.
• The kit is then transferred to the stem cells banks laboratory from the hospital
• The bank check if the sample is viable and healthy for future use or not
• The sample is then processed to concentrate and store the stem cells and divide them into various portions for the future use
• The bank again double-checks the sample health and count the total number of stem cells they have extracted to ensure they are viable and ready to use whenever needed in the future
• The laboratory then cryogenically froze the sample and is stored it in their facilities under perfect condition for decades
- Tooth Stem Cell Banking
Dr. Songtao Shi has discovered stem cells from the teeth dental pulp in 2000. The pulp contains the MSCs or the Mesenchymal Stem Cells, which are also present in the bone marrow. The cells can renew and repair any damaged tissues present in the fat, muscle, cartilage, and more. These stem cells are isolated from the healthy adult or milk teeth and are stored for future therapies.
Like all other body cells, the power of stem cells also decreases with age. It makes the stem cells from the teeth more potential as they are healthier, younger, and include more therapeutic possibilities. Preserving the cells in a specialist stem cell bank provides a higher chance of success in case of transplant.
How can Tooth Stem Cells Beneficial?
The MSCs present in the stem cells plays one of the significant parts in the advancement of healthcare and many clinical trials. Due to high differentiation potential, recent research includes growing, isolating, and re-injecting the MSCs for treating different diseases like arthritis, myocardial infarction, type 1 diabetes, progressive multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and an autism spectrum disorder.
MSCs also offer a safer passage for the treatment of immunodeficiency and degenerative diseases. They are easier to grow in culture and are non-invasive and ethical to collect.