What the cord blood and stem cells are
Hemafund / For parents / The value of umbilical cord blood / What the cord blood and stem cells are
What the cord blood is
You know from the school course of biology that an umbilical cord plays an important role in development of a child. The cord blood passing through the blood vessels provides the future baby with oxygen and necessary nutrients. Moreover, the cord blood contains more than 60 kinds of biologically active substances, fetal growth factors and, what is the most important, stem cells of various types at high concentration.
After the birth of a child, a doctor cuts an umbilical cord which contains certain amount of blood, usually about 50-150 ml. Due to the presence of stem cells, the cord blood becomes the most valuable substrate for treatment of more than 100 diseases.
The era of practical use of the cord blood in medicine was started in France in 1988, and until today, more than 20,000 cord blood transplantations have been performed in the world.
Foreign doctors name the cord blood as “the liquid gold” of medicine, scientists name it as the biggest story of success in the field of cell technologies. Although the cord blood was discarded together with the umbilical cord immediately after the birth in the earlier times, now parents preserve stem cells of the cord blood more and more often in order to provide their baby with a personal reserve.
What stem cells are
Stem cells are the basis of life, the first immature cells capable to self-renovation and development into various body tissues. Just the stem cells give the beginning to the whole human organism.
In a process of prenatal development of a child, stem cells passing from their universal non-differentiated state adopt “a specialization”: some stem cells form neural and muscle tissues while others become heart or liver cells, third part of stem cells transform into skin cells. Just these cells are responsible for regeneration of damaged tissues in our organism. After a signal about a “failure” is received from regulating systems, stem cells move towards the damaged organ and restore it being partially transformed into cells (bone, muscle, liver, heart muscle, and even neural) required by the organism. Thus, they stimulate organism’s inner capability to regenerate.
Stem cells are present in all tissues and organs at all stages of human life, before and after his or her birth. But their number and quality are not constant. The younger a person, the more such cells are in his or her body and “stronger” is their ability to differentiate. Organisms of newborn children have the biggest reserve of stem cells. It is spent during life in a struggle with infections, diseases, traumas, and negative influence of the environment which are inevitable factors of the contemporary life. Decrease in the number of stem cells with years is considered by the medicine of today as one of the reasons of human aging.
Increased activity of stem cells depends also on their ability to divide. Number of divisions which a cell can pass is limited. For comparison, heart and neural tissue cells (cardiomyocytes and neurons) do not divide in practice while a stem cell can divide up to 100 times!
There are several tens of stem cell kinds. All of them have various properties and origins of preparation. In general, stem cells can be divided into stem cells of an adult and embryonic stem cells. A question on research and use of embryonic stem cells remains still open. Preparation of embryonic stem cells is a procedure which makes alert when considered from the viewpoint of the medical ethics and is prohibited from the viewpoint of the religious morality while consequences of their differentiation are unpredictable.
The so-called stem cells of “an adult” are more extensively studied and used in the whole world due to the safe and ethical way of their preparation and better controlled division. The so-called hemopoietic stem cells are the most valuable for the medicine today. In certain severe diseases in humans (genetic defects, leukemia, anemia, etc.), the only way to save the life is transplantation of bone marrow, which means transplantation of hemopoietic stem cells. Bone marrow and cord blood contain just the hemopoietic stem cells at high concentration. The concentration of hemopoietic stem cells in cord blood exceeds the one in bone marrow by 10 times.
Sources of preparation of stem cells:
Hemopoietic stem cells at highest concentrations are present in:
- Cord blood
- Bone marrow
- Peripheral blood
Treatment with cord blood stem cells has become more and more widely applied in clinical practice in the recent years due to the high concentration of stem cells, their 100% compatibility with the child-proprietor, and also simplicity and safety of preparation of such a sample.
Activity
Stem cells of cord blood are much younger than the same type of the cells of the bone marrow because they are preserved in the very beginning of life. During the life, a person becomes older and is affected by unfavorable factors of the environment, i.e. passed diseases, incorrect nutrition, sedentary life, etc. The same factors influence properties of stem cells in our body. The stem cells of cord blood are collected at the very early stage of human life which determines their higher ability to divide and transform into cells of the types required by the organism. This ability of them makes treatment by stem cells so efficient.
Safety
Cord blood collection is an absolutely simple and pain-free procedure which makes no risk for health of a mother and her child. At the same time, preparation of bone marrow requires a two-hour operation under general anesthesia which makes a risk of breathing and cardiovascular disorders as any other operation.
Compatibility
Own cord blood stem cells are 100% suitable for the child and with 25% probability suitable for his or her brothers and sisters and possibly for the close relatives. At the same time, the probability to find a compatible donor sample of stem cells is between 1:1000 and 1:1000000.
Accessibility
Cord blood stem cells preserve their functional activity at super-low temperatures (-196°С) for a long time and can be withdrawn on the first request of the proprietor. Preparation of own sample to giving out takes less than a day while searching a donor sample takes months or even years.
Affordability
Costs of collection, extraction, and storage of own cord blood stem cells during the whole life are at least 10 times smaller than the price of a donor sample of bone marrow stem cells.