Biopiracy: umbilical cord blood banking in India

Lifecell a company dealing with stem cell banking announced the launch of a ‘public banking’ of blood taken from umbilical cords. The company has been running a ‘private bank’ of stem cells for the past two years. In ‘private banking’, the parents of a child can choose to store the umbilical blood during delivery of the child. The blood is then stored in a bank, from which it can be retrieved, to treat various blood based disorders that the child may develop during the course of his lifetime.

In the proposed, ‘public banking’, the company plans to collect blood from donated umbilical cords, to form a bank. From this blood, stem cells will be extracted and categorised. Anybody in need of a particular category of stem cells for medical procedures can then contact the bank and get those cells for a fee.

Even though the company claims that it can treat up to ‘75’ disorders, the idea of stem cell banking it self is being questioned by the international medical community. According to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK, stem cell based procedures can only be used in very specific cases which deal with particular genetic blood conditions that are know to be passed through generations in certain families (called ‘high-risk families’), they cannot be used for all disorders that company claims. Also the Royal College recommends that ‘there is still insufficient evidence to recommend directed commercial cord blood collection and stem-cell storage in low-risk families’. In the Indian scenario, the Indian Council of Medical Research (IMRC) has still not released any guidelines for stem cell banking or procedures based on it. Dr. Puneet Bedi, consultant pregnancy and foetal medicine, with 20 years experience dealing with families with genetic disorders such as like thalassimia and haemophilia, says “people are being told that diabetes and hypertension can be cured through this, though there is no scientific basis for it. Even for families with genetic disorders the quality and quantity of stem cell recovered is rarely clinically useful. Private blood banks have been here for over 2 years, they have no technical skill to preserve cells and the procedures are unproven.”

Apart from the scientific validity of umbilical blood banking and procedures based on it, there are also legal problems. As of now, the law does not recognise the ownership of the umbilical cord; it can be argued that it belongs to the mother or the child. Also the law does not define the liability of the storage bank in case the stem cells get damaged during storage. There are also ethical questions, as improper or ill timed umbilical cord blood removal can jeopardise the mother and child’s health.

Until guidelines from the IMRC are released, it is still advisable to properly understand the implications of umbilical cord blood based stem cell procedures before a donation is made. Meanwhile, a similar process is already in practice in the US, the catch however, is that the cost of stem cells there is up to $18,000, a price which very few Indians can pay. To this, Sumit Chaturvedi, manager marketing, comments “we plan to keep the cost nominal so that every body can afford this service”. As of now Lifecell has not disclosed the price.
Link:See what the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has to say
Link: check LifeCell site