Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg: Regenerative medicine next big advance

In this weeks TechKnow, we meet baby Grace, who is part of an innovative FDA study that uses her umbilical cord bloodbanked after her birthto help treat hydrocephalus, a condition that causes swelling of the brain. Its part of a movement towards regenerative medicine that sounds like sci-fi but is grounded in decades of research.

I personally believe that cell therapy and regenerative medicine are going to be the next big advance in medicine, says Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, head of Duke Universitys Pediatric Blood Program. Cells like [those found in] cord blood are going to drive that pull. I really think we are at the tip of the iceberg.

Dr. K, as shes known at Duke, walked us through what you need to know about harvesting stem cells from cord blood, and how one typeprogenitor cellscould truly revolutionize treatments.

There are about 253 million cells in the cord blood that was frozen after Graces birth.

The blood bag is taken from where its been stored in a liquid nitrogen freezer, gently defrosted in a water bath, and meticulously prepared at the lab during a 90-minute process.

We typically get 3 to 5 ounces of blood, Kurtzberg explains. "Only a small fraction of those cells are the important cells for the therapy.

There are probably only 20 real stem cells in the whole cord blood collection, and we dont know what they look likethey are hiding out. We know that they are in there, and we know that when we get the whole unit back, they will be contained in the other cells,but we dont know how to pull them out and find them and just use them alone for therapy.

Besides those 20 or so stem cells, there are probably hundreds of thousands of what we call progenitor cells. They are cells that have already made the decision to be one type of cell, be it a liver cell, or heart cell, or muscle cell, or an eyelid cell, or a blood cell, or a lung cell or a brain cell. When we infuse progenitor cells back into the patient, they go back to the damaged organs and do the real job of helping repair those organs.

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Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg: Regenerative medicine next big advance