It can also be used for children and young adults who can't find a matching bone-marrow donor
Posted by admin"It can also be used for children and young adults who can't find a matching bone-marrow donor."Stem cells also have a significant advantage for blood disease treatment over bone marrow. The most important part of that growth in stocks is among people in ethnic minorities, who have been under-represented both in blood stocks and in potential bone marrow donors."Cord blood is useful for treating both inherited haemolytic disorders such as thalassaemia, and malignancies," says Dr Contreras. "We have 680 units, but by the end of the year we should have 2,000, and in three years' time 10,000 units," Dr Contreras says. Their appeal should be heard within three months.Part of the BTS's anger is derived from the fact that it has been expanding its collection of "cord blood", gathered with the consent of mothers (otherwise, its collection would legally count as assault). I don't see how you can patent life."That's why Eurocord, a consortium of national blood transfusion services from the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, and the European Bone Marrow Association, are challenging the award of the patent to Biocyte. I'm all for patenting drugs, but not things that aren't real inventions. But nobody's doing that in Europe, so why patent it over here?"The patent is too broad Life should not be patented.
Dr Marcela Contreras, executive director of the Blood Transfusion Service (BTS) in London, says: "Biocyte say they wanted the patent because speculators in the US have been freezing babies' stem cells for future use. Who else thought of doing this and creating a commercial enterprise around it?"Who indeed? The fact is that in Europe, the second sentence rarely enters the equation. Chris Moller, the company president, says: "We spent more than $8 million [pounds 5 million] on this We want to be appropriately rewarded. Stem cells only exist in the foetus; after birth, it is the bone marrow which produces new blood cells.Biocyte says that it should be allowed to patent the cells because it did much of the original work which discovered their function and ability to effect a cure.
The method has already been used in more than 500 cases as an alternative to replacing diseased bone marrow. In effect, they are "mother cells" of blood - when introduced into diseased parts of the body, they can repopulate it with new, healthy blood cells. But don't forget that other companies, and research organisations, have patented human genes: for example, the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are in effect "owned" by their discoverers on both sides of the Atlantic.What has infuriated doctors about the Biocyte patent is that, unlike possible diagnoses and cures for BRCA-induced cancers, the use of stem cells is very immediate. Anyone who wanted to use stem cells for a medical procedure - and that includes the process of collecting and storing them - would have to apply for a licence and possibly pay a royalty to the company, under the terms of the patent. It might seem surprising in the first place that a commercial entity could patent something so ubiquitous as the blood cells found in the umbilical cord between mother and child. According to the patent, Biocyte has the rights to the use of any "stem cells" from umbilical blood. The row is over a patent granted by the European Patent Office to Biocyte, based in Pennsylvania.