Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Stem cell products have been used in human healthcare since the
late 1960s (Brown et al., 2006). The first products derived from stem
cell technologies to be used in humans were haematopoietic stem
cell, or bone marrow, transplants in cancer medicine. First developed
for the treatment of victims of nuclear irradiation, it took advances
in tissue matching and understanding of the process of transplantation
and regeneration before such transplants worked effectively and
entered into routine use (Brown et al., 2006). Bone marrow products
are usually obtained via altruistic donation from a volunteer whose
tissue matches the patient, typically a close relative like a sibling or
parent.
Haematopoietic stem cells are also found in umbilical cord blood.
The discovery that the umbilical cord contained haematopoietic
stem cells in the early 1980s saw an untapped opportunity for
utilizing these stem cells instead of harvesting them from the much
more complicated (and risky) procedure of bone marrow extraction
(Waldby, 2006). Traditionally thrown out as waste after delivery,
cord-blood stem cells are relatively easy to collect from the umbilical
cord either when it has been clamped or just recently cut after
childbirth and are able to be stored for later use (Waldby, 2006). The
collection process poses its own difficulties, however, in that many
women might not want another person involved in an already highly
medicalized process; not all hospitals are accessible to cord-blood
collection staff; not all births occur at a time when the collection
person is available; and not all births allow collection to occur.
Critics of cord-blood collection also suggest that there are risks to
the mother and child as attention might be diverted in the collection
process (Waldby, 2006).
Public cord-blood banking, developed in the early 1990s, depends
on the altruistic donation of cord blood to a central storage facility
for the use of anyone who needs it (Waldby, 2006). The development
of privatized cord-blood banking around the same time, however,
resulted in an unprecedented marketization of the stem cell industries
(Waldby, 2006). Privatized cord-blood banking was the first instance
of a commercially driven market in stem cell technologies outside
the confines of health delivery. Where bone marrow donation was
specifically adopted in hospital settings as a means of treating
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