INDIAN DOCTOR INNOVATES NEW TECHNIQUE FOR BONE MARROW HARVEST

Mayank Jain — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 08:54:47 +0000

There are many diseases which cannot be treated by existing modality of treatment like MND (ALS), cerebellar ataxia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, Friedrich’s ataxia, downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, Prader Willy syndrome, HSA, spino-muscular atrophy, cardiomyopathies, inborn errors of metabolism, diabetes mellitus, retinitis pigmentosa, age related macular degeneration, retinal dystrophies, renal failure, AVN & many others and the patient succumbs to these disorders or lives a life full of morbidity or a vegetative life causing a heavy toll on the family

CELL BASED THERAPY

There are many ways by which neuro regeneration and other tissue regeneration can take place like cell-based therapies (stem cells), growth factors, bio-peptides, omega 3 fatty acids but out of these cell-based therapies (stem cells) have very promising results. Cell based therapies (stem cells) can be syngeneic (twins) autologous (same person), allogenic (different person), xenogeneic (different species). Out of all these cell-based therapies, autologous stem cell therapy is safe and is yielding good & promising results without any complications .

AUTOLOGUS STEM CELL THERAPY

Autologous stem cell therapy means that cells would be taken from patients own body so there is no question of graft rejection or reaction and its absolutely safe. Autologous stem cells can be harvested from bone marrow, body fat, tooth germ, menstrual blood and can be given without culturing in lab because culturing of cells leads to mutations.

BONE MARROW HARVESTING

Out of these sources of autologous stem cells, bone marrow is a very rich source of haematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, growth factors and ligands. Harvesting a marrow is a high precision surgery and normally its harvested from posterior superior iliac spine (fan shaped bone of pelvis) but only by aspiration as breaking the bone trabeculae’s are difficult.

NEW TECHNIQUE

The newer technique aims at harvesting the bone marrow from femur under C arm/flat panel/cine loop control with just 1/2 cm incision which is minimally invasive and harvesting the marrow by rasping the femur with specially designed cannula called as MJ cannula. Rasping movements helps in breaking bone trabeculae’s in entire length of femur and the quality of harvest is very good. One can harvest large volumes of marrow app 600 ml. In addition one can processes the marrow fat also as marrow fat is obtained because of breaking of yellow marrow.

ADVANTAGES

This revolutionary technique has many advantages as the yield of hematopoietic stem cells and growth factor is very high as marrow is harvested through rasping, reaming and marrow mining. This would prevent graft failure in allogenic transplants because of inadequacy of cells and growth factors and better outcomes in autologous transplants and reduce the number of sittings. This is a paradigm shift in stem cell harvesting techniques and would become gold standard for harvesting bone marrow stem cells and growth factors.