The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : LifeCell to start centres at Vijayawada, Vizag

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Friday, Aug 03, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

LifeCell to start centres at Vijayawada, Vizag

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: The Chennai-based LifeCell, a private cord blood bank, is planning to set up marketing and collection centres in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam. The company currently has such centres in 16 cities in the country, besides the main Rs.14-crore banking facility at Chennai.

The centres are operating at Hyderabad, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Kochi, Calicut, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Kolkata.

According to LifeCell’s CEO, V.R.Chandramouli, about 8,000 enrolments had so far been registered for umbilical blood cord stem cell preservation in the country, which includes some celebrities.

He said the company which was awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification has a tie-up with 500 hospitals for collecting cord blood.

It was keen to rewrite the quality standards in the country and seek international accreditations from American Association of Blood Bank, Fact-Netcord ( both USA) and TGA (Australia).

Marketing

He said LifeCell already has marketing and collection centres in Dubai and Sri Lanka. It would start operations in Singapore by September 2007 and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia by June next.

In Riyadh, a full-fledged facility would be set up at a cost of Rs.15 crores, he added.

Aaswari Bapat, Vice-President and head of Lab operations, said that around 10,000 stem cell transplantations from cord blood were done in the USA and more than 2,000 in Australia.

Currently, stem cell therapy was being used to treat leaukemia, thalassaemia and certain metabolic disorders.

Trials were underway for cardiac diseases, diabetes and muscular dystrophy, among others.

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