The phrase HEALTH IS WEALTH runs especially true in the hectic lifestyles that most of us lead today. Everybody needs to call a time-out or two. We all have our own list of things that we would love to try at least once in our lifetime: ski on the snow-topped Alps, see the ancient Pyramids, bungee jump, or dive into a coral-bedded sea.

Don’t allow your health to become the reason you miss out on opportunities to fully discover and experience life.

This is where Adult Stem Cell Banking comes in! At StemTECH International, we harvest those healthy cells from your very own peripheral (circulating) blood, and store them (actually, we cryopreserve them diligently for you) just in case you may need them in the future.

 

 

16 FACTS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ADULT STEM CELLS:

Easy and simple procedure
Able to treat more than 75 diseases (refer to the table on next page)
Adult Stem Cells are undifferentiated cells centred on their ability to divide or self-renew indefinitely.
Able to naturally produce growth factors that mobilize or protect other cells residing in the tissue (Noble, 2000)
Able to migrate to injured tissue or other discreet places in the body (Aboody, et al, 2008)
Greatly reduced or even eliminate tissue rejection
Eliminate graft vs host disease (GvHD) by using your own stem cells
Able to be engineered to produce therapeutic agents
Healthy stem cells are better candidates for any medical procedure
Healthy people are unlikely to have stem cells already programmed for diseases
Collection of stem cells process is important in order to avoid infusing stem cells that may already be damaged
Families with medical history of developing diseases that are potentially treatable with stem cell transplants
Compatibility & Accessibility - Many older adults diagnosed with a disease requiring transplant are unable to find healthy, matched donors
100% perfect match (autologous) – eliminates the problem of a person’s immune system rejecting foreign tissue/cells
Engraftment with your own stem cells is faster, safer and much less costly than receiving someone else’s stem cells (allogeneic)
Very safe as it is taken from your own body!
 
 

When we embarked on Adult Stem Cell Banking Services, many people responded by asking the million-dollar question, “Is it painful?” and “The sight of the needle going into my body is not so pleasant lah!”

To prove that it is a painless and effortless exercise, I took it upon myself to be the first Adult Stem Cell client at StemTECH International. This is the fruitful journey I went through.

The procedure started with a simple half-hour talk with our Blood Bank Director, Prof. Dr. Menaka Hariharan who, incidentally, was the first lady to be sent by our Malaysian Government to Seattle, USA, to learn about Stem Cells back in the 1980s. She came back and led a team in carrying out the first bone marrow, peripheral blood and cord blood stem cell transplants.

A medical questionnaire is filled up to determine my current health status, then, it’s off to the medical checkup , where a blood sample is taken and sent to our lab for testing. The results came back with flying colours, of course (ahem!).

During the ‘counselling’ by Prof. Dr. Menaka, I was informed that there is a drug (safe and without side-effects) to increase the number of stem cells produced in the marrow which are thereafter released in our blood streams. This drug is called ‘Neupogen®’. One has to be administered with the Neupogen® injections for a period of 5 days (once a day) before undergoing the harvesting on the 6th day.

The next phase was my stem cell storing journey. This started off with me getting hook onto the latest Apheresis machine. Now, now, while that may sound like one of those gadgets from a rerun of Back To The Future, the Apheresis machine is designed to work just like a Dialysis machine; the circulating blood is drawn out and into the machine and then spun around so that the red and white blood and platelets are all separated from each other. From the white blood, my stem cells are then extracted by the newer and more sophisticated Apheresis machine and the remaining red blood together with the platelets flow back into my body. Easy-peasey.

The older machine would have taken 4 to 6 hours to harvest my stem cells but with this newer machine which we placed at the Day Care of Tropicana Medical Centre, it did the job in precisely 2 hours and 15 minutes. (The timing of the harvesting procedure differs from one person to another, but we can safely say that the entire process of actual harvesting is approximately 2 to 4 hours.)

There are three areas through which the harvesting can be done - through the blood veins in your arm, neck or groin (femoral vein). The veins in the arms are normally small and may cause stoppages in the flow of the blood during harvesting. And many would be too scared to draw out blood from the neck area. Therefore the ideal vein is from the femoral vein in the groin area.

Let’s now address the issue that’s probably playing on everybody’s mind: just how painful are we talking here?

I can now attest to it, the only two points wherein a slight sense of discomfort (read: “ant bite” prick, as I will put it) is felt, is when the local anaesthetic is administered to the groin area. And the pretty Anaesthesiologist at Tropicana Medical Centre, Dr. Khoo, made it a breeze that I actually didn’t feel anything while she inserted the catheter with the needle that is connected to the Apheresis machine. After Dr. Khoo had done her magic in about 10 minutes, all that is left to do is lay back and relax while the Apheresis machine sorts everything out for me, literally.


Ms Wenddi-Anne Chong, Group Executive Director of TMC Life Sciences Berhad/StemTECH™ International together with Prof. Dr. Menaka H., Blood Bank Director and Mr. GE Kua, Laboratory Director of StemTECH™ International standing next to the latest Apheresis Machine at the Tropicana Medical Centre 

I just continued doing my work from my bedside, making calls etc (well, I must admit that I am a workaholic horse!) before taking a short afternoon nap. When I woke up, the whole process was over and I was already disconnected from the Apheresis without realising it. After  2 to 3 hours of monitoring, I was discharged.