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Top doctor calls for stem cell donor registry in UAE
DUBAI - The need to establish a stem cell donor registry in the UAE was stressed by Dr. Patrick Tan, Medical Director of the Haematology and Stem Cell Transplant Centre at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, who has shown that unrelated donor transplants using stem cells or umbilical cord blood for the treatment of Thalassemia and blood cancer is a possibility.
The first successful treatment of Thalassemia using unrelated stem cell donor transplants was carried out in 1995 by Dr. Tan and the patient is doing well 10 years after the transplant.
Another successful transplant was done using umbilical cord blood. The dearth of Thalassemia cases on the island republic is ascribed by Dr. Tan to the small number of local Thalassemia sufferers in Singapore.
“It is important that the matching of donors to patients is good in order to get a good level of success,” Dr. Tan said, referring to unrelated donors, adding that a better match is achieved within the same racial pool. To have a successful transplant four pairs of the human leukocyte antigen have to be matched.
“There is some racial link, it would be important for a country to set up a donor registry, in Asia we have a registry for the Chinese population, in Europe they would have a registry for the European descent, in the United States there is a huge registry, these are the registries that can provide possible donors for patients,” Dr. Tan said.
He said creating public awareness of this treatment option, which holds so much promise for Thalassemia patients, is important to see if a volunteer donor registry can be set up.
“Most patients with Thalassemia Major have to receive blood every three to four weeks for their whole lives, many of these patients eventually develop iron over-loading and organ damage. Most will live for 20 to 30 years and will die from organ failure and heart failure. It is a very sad thing to see a person in the prime of life about to start work dying from the disease, having suffered all these years from poor quality of life,” Dr. Tan said. He added: “We are looking into whether there will be a curative treatment for Thalassemia, the only thing that has been established that could cure Thalassemia is a stem cell transplant, marrow transplant or umbilical cord blood transplant. Stem cells coming from a normal person replace the blood of a Thalassemia patient.”
Dr. Tan said that if the transplant is done early, before a patient reaches the age of ten, the success rate could be as high as 90 per cent.
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