The Hindu Business Line : Reliance Life sets up cord blood archive

Blood taken out of the umbilical cord of a newborn, with the consent of the mother, finds its way into a cryogenic depository powered by liquid nitrogen.

A decade or so later, the stem cell-enriched cord blood is taken out of this bio-archive to treat the same child, now a young adult suffering from an otherwise incurable disease — say a genetic disorder or a blood cancer variant.

This is a sample of how future schools of life science are likely to be fashioned the world over, as bone marrow as a source of stem cells is likely to make way for cord blood in a big way.

And an Indian company is making a shout as loud as some global majors. True, biological insurance is likely to be as precious as any other life insurance formats in the comings years but that may take a while to unfold.

Reliance Life Sciences Pvt Ltd is in the final stages of opening a 3,000 unit strong cord blood repository to the world.

An inventory that took over two years to build and to that extent a complete antithesis of the normal Reliance mantra of mass production.

"We are taking a very long-term view in our stem cell research. The stem cell-enriched cord blood repository initiative of Reliance Life Sciences is an investment in the future of medicine," said Mr Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd.

The present bio-archive will take another six months to get critical as the units are at the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing stage.

Typically, those going in for a stem cell transplant look to match as many of the six parameters, with three being a minimum and five termed a very good match.

Reliance Life will soon move out of its makeshift base in a city hospital into its own campus in Navi Mumbai, with an eye on scaling up — the critical mass being 10,000 stem cell units before the company can join a global network of cord blood repositories.

Arguably on the Reliance radar is New York Blood Bank, at present the world's largest repository with 13,000 units.

"Reliance Life will be in a position to set up eight new plants of 6,226 units each over the next three years. By the time our repository reaches 30,000 cord blood cell units, the total capital expenditure would be around Rs 150 crore. Against this, the timeframe for revenue inflow seems a fair distance away," said Mr K.V. Subramaniam, Senior Executive Vice-President, RIL.

The cord blood unit comes in two forms: Relicord A (form donor umbilical cords) and Relicord S (developed from siblings). The former carries a "service charge" of Rs 2.5 lakh, while the cost of developing the latter is Rs 1.07 lakh for the first five years and Rs 3,500 for every year thereafter.

"There are requests pouring in from various parts of the world with HLA profiles. The present requirement for transplants is limited to those with genetic disorders such as thalassemia and sickle cell anaemia as also a variety of cancer. We are also researching on the scope of using cord blood cells in areas such as neurology, cardiology and so on, but that will take another two years to reach clinical level testing," said Ms Chandra Viswanathan, Vice-President (Biologics), Reliance Life.

Clearly, none of the cord blood cell repositories are in a hurry as they square up for bigger battles ahead.

Meanwhile, one object that was thrown out all these years as medical waste — the placental blood that is at the other end of the umbilical — is set to become an unlikely saviour of future generations.

And a start is getting made with the 25-ml cryobag of blood that gets stored in the bio-archives that are beginning to multiply in various corners of the globe.

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