LifeCell, the first private cord blood stem cell banking service in India, is planning to venture into public cord blood banking service, before April 2006. The company also plans to set up stem cell banking companies at Dubai and Malaysia in collaboration with foreign partners.

The public cord blood banking service, which follow the US guidelines, will focus on collecting cord blood from public through proper testing including the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing test, which would cost around Rs 30,000.

"At present there is no such public registry for cord blood banking in India and the existing foreign registries would not match the Indian patients. To commence a public cord blood bank, first of all we have to set up an Indian registry, for which we do not have a guideline. We will, therefore, follow the US guidelines as there should be at least 1000 entries to start the registry in the public domain. We are planning to collect this within a year through free tests," S. Abhayakumar, CEO, Asia CRYO-CELL Pvt. Ltd., the promoters of LifeCell told Pharmabiz. It envisages selling each sample for Rs 10 lakh to the buyer.

He said that plans were to collect cord blood from all over the country through reputed hospitals with prior consent from the parents. LifeCell already has a storage capacity for 15,000 samples and the company is ready to expand it when required. The company has set an initial investment of Rs 20 crore for the public cord blood bank.

LifeCell is also in talks with companies from Dubai and Saudi Arabia for setting up a company for collecting and preserving the stem cells in Middle East. Talks are on with a 150 million dollar company in this connection, informed Prasad Mangipudi, vice president, marketing, LifeCell. The new company may be launched within six months.

LifeCell will launch its operations in Dubai by early February, by setting up a marketing centre, focusing on non residential Indians, for whom the cord blood will be preserved at the storage at Chennai. Talks for setting up a similar company at Malaysia are also on progress and the partners in both these countries would be announced by March, this year, added Prasad.

The company envisages setting up six centres, at Dubai, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Austria within the financial year 2006.

The company will also commence trial manufacturing of stem cell suspension by the month of June 2006. Saneron India, the research and therapy arm of LifeCell, recently formed a collaboration with the leading bio-pharmaceutical company Saneron CCEL, which will hold the rights for global manufacturing of stem cell suspension, while the patent rights for the process are endorsed to Saneron CCEL. The manufacturing will also earmark introduction of the therapy against heart disorder for the first time, according to Abhayakumar.

"LifeCell is also on a venture to identify more biological sources for stem cell, and plans to introduce Placenta as a source by June 2006. Umbilical cord tissue and fat tissues are the other sources undergoing research at present. The commercial operations on these sources will commence by the end of year 2006," added Abhayakumar.

By analysing the result of the tie up with Sree Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute (SRMC&RI), in setting up stem cell transplant centre, the company is also planning to set up similar transplant centres in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, in the consecutive years from 2007 to 2009.

LifeCell will co-ordinate the developments of stem cell research and therapy in India by setting up an association of leading players in the industry, to ensure the health growth of the industry. The company has already started talks active players like Reliance Life Sciences, Sree Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute (SRMC&RI), Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore etc. for forming such an association. The association will act as an ethical body, by co-operating with the government to ensure fair play in the industry. The association will commence functioning within three months, with the participation of Department of Biotechnology, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and other such bodies.