Stem Cells: A Personal Perspective

This is a personal account of my observation of events associated with stem cells in recent years during my stays in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Hong Kong and China. It is based on my notes on the news about stem cells from reports broadcast on television, newspapers, magazines and medical journals. It is my perception that the current large amount of news on the developments and applications of stem cells may be confusing to the general public, and that better government regulations on the ‘businesses’ of stem cells are urgently needed. I will start with a few personal matters and then proceed to the subject proper. My earlier professional interest was in hemoglobinopathies, during my studies in the late Regents’ Professor Dr. Titus H.J. Huisman’s Protein Chemistry Laboratory and Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, GA, USA. In 2003, my interest turned to ‘stem cells’ on my appointment as Scientific Director of StemLife, which, at that time, was the only cord blood cryo-preservation bank in Malaysia, with headquarters in Kuala Lumpur and a laboratory in Cyberjaya. While there, I had regular Saturday-open-house, so that potential clients, i.e., pregnant women and their husbands, could learn fully the logistics involved in cord blood banking and view the functioning laboratory through a glass partition. Back then, StemLife was storing close to 100 umbilical cord blood a month. In 2004, I was involved in the successful use of the umbilical cord blood from a newborn baby boy to save his elder sister from the tragic effects of leukemia. The parents were of Chinese-Malaysian ethnicity in their 30’s. Their first child, born the previous year, was a baby girl named Angel, who was diagnosed as having leukemia a few months after birth and was assessed to have less than 10% chance of survival by her attending physicians. A younger brother, named Sam, was born in April 2004, and when tested was found to be a perfect HLA-match with Angel. Two months later, his cord blood stem cells, which had been stored at the StemLife Cord Blood Bank in Cyberjaya, were retrieved, transported to Kuala Lumpur and transplanted into the 14-month-old Angel at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. “After the transplant in 2004/ June, Angel gained her health in months to become the 1 Stem Cell Link, Tai Wai, N.T, Hong Kong, SAR, People’s Repub lic of China BJMG 14/2 (2011) 7-12 10.2478/v10034-011-0041-0