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South Korean Firm Plans Hospital for Stem Cell Therapy
Agence France Presse
05 July 2005
SEOUL, July 5 (AFP) -
A South Korea medical company said Tuesday it plans to open the world's first hospital exclusively providing treatment using stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood.
Histostem Co. Ltd. said it is close to a final agreement with an unnamed European investment company to set up the hospital in the southern resort island of Jeju in the first half of 2007.
Under the accord, Histostem and the European investor will jointly put in 80 million dollars to set up a hospital with some 100 beds, company officials told AFP.
"This would be the world's first hospital exclusively for umbilical cord blood stem-cell therapy," said Han Hoon, the doctor who heads Histostem, a medical venture company.
For two years Han has been using the therapy to treat patients with medical conditions that other treatments have failed to help.
He and his reserchers have carried out more than 250 umbilical cord blood stem cell treatments since July 2003, including cases of spinal cord injuries, liver cirrhosis, Buerger's disease, diabetes, chronic renal failure and a dozen other diseases.
Results were varied, depending on the kind of diseases and the degree of severity in each case. But in most cases treatments improved or cured the diseases, Han said.
Han and his team made headlines in November last year when Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, who had been unable to walk since damaging her spine in an accident two decades earlier, was shown at a press conference taking a few cautious steps with the help of a walking frame.
It was the world's first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been treated successfully with stem cells from cord blood, Han says.
Hwang told AFP on Tuesday that following a second injection of stem cells in April, her feeling continued to return below the damaged part of her spinal cord although she felt severe pain accompanying the recovery.
Han said his team took the lead in developing umbilical cord blood stem cell therapy in 2000 by successfully isolating stem cells from umbilical cord blood for the first time.
In videotaped testimony screened at a press conference, several patients suffering from Buerger's disease, diabetes and liver cirrhosis said they had been improving remarkably following umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants.
In May Han's team treated their first foreign patients, a Croatian and a Turk with spinal cord injuries.
It was too early to tell the final effect but the two had partially recovered their sense of hot and cold and finger movements, Han said.
Han and his team also received medical records from 135 other people including foreigners, for future treatments.
Han, a doctor with expertise in both immune genetics and bone marrow transplants, said his ample stockpiles of cord blood in South Korea helped providefertile soil for experiments in new techniques and treatments.
Umbilical cord blood is not the only source of stem cells. They are also found in human embryos, bone marrow and other body parts.
But he said cord blood is the best because it carries none of the ethical questions associated with using human embryos for medical treatment and is easier to use and more flexible and effective than bone marrow cells.
Technical difficulties exist in isolating stem cells from frozen umbilical cord blood, finding cells with genes matching those of the recipient and selecting the right place in the body to deliver the cells, he said.
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