India’s first unrelated double cord stem cell transplant successfully done at Lotus institute of Hematology, Oncology and bone marrow transplantation, Nashik.
A rare success story of a 7 year old girl with a serious blood disorder treated with a stem cell transplant procedure is nothing short of a story from science fiction!
Dr Pritesh Junagade, Director and Bone marrow transplant physician, who along with his team at Lotus hospital, Nashik performed the country’s first double cord stem cell transplant explained the procedure.
The patient, 7 year girl from sangamner had aplastic anemia, where one’s own red cell, white cells and platelets are not produced as the basic” stem cell” from which our blood cells are formed is defective. She required repeated blood and platelet transfusion support for last 2 years. The only curative treatment for such serious disease is to give someone else’s “ stem cells” so that they produce the blood cells.
This is possible if the patient has a “ donor” who can give the stem cells. Normally our siblings (brother and sister) can donate the stem cells but there is only 25% chance that the stem cells match!
The patient treated at Lotus Hospital had one younger sister whose stem cells were stored at the time of birth (taken form the cord) in the hope that they are 100% match and can be used for the patient in future. Unfortunately the stem cells were only 50% match, so we could not use them.
We have cord stem cell banks, just like blood banks where stem cells collected at the time of birth form the cord which connects the mother to the baby, are stored after paying a fee. Till 2017, one such bank. Lifecell bank at Chennai use to allow the stem cells to be used for our own family only. But due to prevailing practices all over the world they allowed use of the stored stem cells to be used for other needy patients.
Our patient luckily had two such stored cord stem cells from other babies who stored their cord stem cells in the same bank. Normally we use 1 such unit, but we needed 2 such units as the quantity of stem cells from one unit was not “sufficient”, so we decided to use both the stem cells. So infact both the cord stem cell units were only 90% match with one another and also with the patient, but we had to taka a small risk and went ahead with the “double cord stem cell” transplant.
22 days after the actual procedure the infused stem cells started working and all 3 types of blood cells are now in normal numbers and the patient is free from blood and platelet transfusion.
“Use of double cord stem cells is rare and with this success more centres should use the procedure for the benefit of many such patients who do not have matched sibling” said Dr.Pritesh Junagade, who has 12 year’s experience in India of performing stem cell transplantation at his own Lotus Institute of Stem cell transplantation in Nashik.
It is one again proved that tier 2 cities are also capable of doing complex procedure at much reduced costs for the benefit of majority of our patients.
Dr Junagade said it is a team work and he is fortunate to have a dedicated team at his Hospital. He thanked Life cell, Chennai who delivered the stem cells to Nashik without which such procedure could not have been possible.
