Apr 28

AHMEDABAD: Just over a fortnight ago, a German man took eight injections and got hooked up to a machine for five-odd hours while peripheral blood stem cells were collected. These were put on a flight and sent to the city-based Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI) to give a 50-year-old housewife Kesar Devi a fresh lease life.

Even as news of an Indian donor ditching Stanford University professor Nalini Ambady, battling for life after a leukemia relapse, hit the headlines recently, Gujarat has recorded its first matched unrelated donor transplantation using stems cells of an international donor.

Kesar Devi was diagnosed with blood cancer last year. After chemotherapy, her cancer resurfaced recently. Stem cell transplantation was the next line of treatment. Unfortunately, both her brother and sister did not turn out to be a perfect match as donors.

No donor was found on the two Indian registries, which has 20,000 donors each. Since GCRI had registered with German bone marrow donor registry DKMS, her data was uploaded. She found a single match in the German man who donated his stem cells. In fact, two other blood cancer patients have also found their matching donors in the German registry.

On Saturday, it was Day 16 after the stem cell transplant where Kesars diseases blood cells were destroyed with chemotherapy and the German mans stem cells infused into her bloodstream. The hope was that she would get a 50% chance at life again. Kesar is doing well and is likely to be discharged on Monday.

International donors are a significant development given that siblings of many patients decline to be donors. At least two out of 10 patients siblings refuse to become donors, said Dr Sandip Shah, director of the bone marrow transplant department at GCRI.

People here either fear they will invite disease if they donate marrow or blood stem cells or are restrained by relatives. Peripheral blood stem cells regenerate within 48 hours of donation, Shah added.

Germans offer subsidized donor marrow and stem cell at Rs 6 lakh while the same sourced from the US can cost between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 30 lakh.

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