Ex vivo expansion of cord blood and bone marrow stem cells

血癌患者通常可以通过接受他人的骨髓移植来治疗。通常，这个人必须是血亲或有相容的组织类型，以确保移植不会被排斥。然而，找到这样的匹配并不总是那么简单。几年来，妇女们在生完孩子后，一直在捐献脐带内发现的血液。这种血液中充满了干细胞，能够重建接受者的整个免疫系统，而且不需要完全匹配，因此脐带血细胞可以用于治疗更多的患者。不幸的是，每个脐带血单位的细胞数量有限，太小，无法治疗大多数成年人。我们已经开发出培养基配方，在初步的体外研究中，可以使脐带血单位中的造血干细胞/祖细胞扩增至少30-100倍。在这个项目中，我们最初寻求开发一种临床合规的过程，在移植前体外扩增脐带血细胞，以便更多的患者可以接受这种挽救生命的治疗。

Patients with blood cancers can usually be treated by receiving a bone marrow transplant from another person. Usually this person has to be a blood relation or have a compatible tissue type to ensure the transplant is not rejected. However, finding such a match is not always simple. For some years now, women have been donating the blood found in the umblilical cord after given birth to their babies. This blood is full of stem cells which are capable of reconstituting the entire immune system of the recipient, furthermore complete matching is not required, so cord blood cells can be used to treat many more patients. Unfortunately the number of cells in each cord blood unit is limited and too small to treat most adults. We have already developed media formulations which in preliminary in vitro studies allow the blood stem/progenitor cells in the cord blood units to be expanded by at least 30-100 fold. With this project we are seeking initially to develop a clinically compliant process to expand cord blood cells ex vivo prior to transplantation so that more patients can be treated with this live saving therapy.