Chennai: Acknowledging community cord blood banking as a novel, life-saving measure, ISPAT (Indian Society for Pre-natal Diagnosis and Therapy) today shared its appreciation for LifeCell’s pioneering efforts in the space of Stem Cell Banking. With the recent success of India’s first dual cord blood transplant, the medical body also reiterated the need for private organizations timely support in enabling path-breaking treatment modalities that are beneficial to the society.

Sharing his views, Dr. Jaideep Malhotra, President – ISPAT (Indian Society for Pre-natal Diagnosis and Therapy), said “India needs to take a frontline position on all these path-breaking treatment modalities, we have a huge population and we also have many who can benefit from these treatment modalities, all we need is mass awareness amongst our healthcare providers and public. Our heartiest congratulations to the team at LifeCell for their timely support and we also appreciate their dedicated efforts in creating awareness about the life-saving measures of community cord blood banking. We are confident that their continued support to the medical fraternity through innovative stem cell banking practices will bring about remarkable developments in the healthcare segment.”

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Mayur Abhaya, MD, LifeCell International, said “We are delighted and humbled by the appreciation from a reputed medical body – ISPAT. Their acknowledgement of our efforts in steam cell banking is truly encouraging. We are confident that our efforts will continue to benefit more and more Indians and we will continue to support life-saving measures of medical practitioners.”

Community Cord Blood Banking, a unique and innovative stem cell banking initiative that was introduced by LifeCell in 2017, helped save a seven-year-old girl suffering from aplastic anaemia – a rare and serious blood disorder when all other possible treatments failed. A team of senior doctors from LOTUS Institute of Haematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation successfully conducted a double-unit cord blood transplant to save the life of Child from Nashik, Maharashtra.

This transplant was, in particular, challenging because there were no appropriate bone marrow donors and the cost of retrieval of matching, units from public cord blood banks would have been quite high. As members of LifeCell Community Bank, the parents placed a matching request for two cord blood units after the child’s sibling was found to be only a 50% (4/8) match. Two high-quality matches (⅞) were found in the registry, which fulfilled the requirement for Umbilical Cord Blood (UCB) transplantation.