Korea's leading stem cell research company Histone, in participation with the government of India, is planning to set up Asia's largest cord blood bank in the country. The company, which is also scouting for a potential private sector partner in India, has been in talks with few local companies including Reliance Life Sciences, it is learnt.

The umbilical cord blood bank project in the government-private participation is learnt to have been cleared by the Union Health Ministry. Though the total investment of the project and the FDI input within the project is yet be worked out between the government and the joint venture partners, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) would be playing a key role in the initial process of setting up the cord blood bank, which involves scientific and other related medical and ethical issues, said Dr N K Ganguly, director general, ICMR.

Dr Ganguly said that the association of Korean company in setting up this large scale stem cell centre in the country is very vital now as Korea has experimented several innovations in the medical application of the cord blood cells. Also, it is considered as a prestigious collaboration between the two countries in the field of modern medical science. The formal announcement of this project will be made at the 92nd Indian Science Congress being organised at Ahmedabad in January 2005, said Ganguly, while talking to Pharmabiz in Mumbai.

It may be recalled that a team of Korean researchers claimed recently that they had performed a miracle by enabling a patient, who could not even stand up for the last 19 years, to walk with stem cell therapy. The scientists said they had last month transplanted multi-potent stem cells from umbilical cord blood to the 37-year-old female patient suffering from a spinal cord injury and she can now walk on her own. For the unprecedented clinical test, the scientists isolated stem cells from umbilical cord blood and then injected them into the damaged part of the spinal cord.

According to Korean scientists the new therapy has a huge upside potential when applied to real treatments, without arousing much ethical disputes. The technology is expected to lead to breakthrough treatments for many hard-to-cure diseases, for instance, by creating replacement organs and tissues. In comparison, stem cells originating from the blood of umbilical cords would not raise such problems since that blood is routinely discarded after the birth of a baby.

Another upside of cord blood stem cells is that they can adapt to the injected bodies without triggering a big negative inner reaction, which are common in other transplantations. Also it is not necessary to have a strict match between cord blood stem cell type and the immune system of a patient because the latter accepts the former pretty well thanks to its immaturity, say the scientists.