A new Israeli company is using the natural process of cell death to help people undergoing transplants of all kinds live longer. This counterintuitive approach is the vision of Cellect and could radically change the way people with leukemia manage their disease.

Stem cells hold the promise to eradicate cancer and other devastating diseases. But one of the biggest bottlenecks for clinicians and researchers is getting enough stem cells in a blood sample to use in transplantation.

If too many of the donors regular body cells are left in the sample, a patient undergoing a bone-marrow transplant will probably suffer an immune reaction, which can be deadly. In fact, about half of all bone-marrow transplants lead to graft vs. host disease, requiring a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs.

A new approach to harvesting stem cells is required, says Dr. Shai Yarkoni, a medical doctor, biomed expert and co-founder and CEO of Cellect.

Stem cells are defined not by how they look but what they can do. So my partner, Dr. Nadir Askenasy also a physician, a chemist and a genius came up with an intuitive approach for how we should select them from a sample for transplantation, says Yarkoni in an interview with ISRAEL21c.

Off-the-shelf, cheaper, faster

Several companies, such Miltenyi Biotec in Germany, make tools to cull stem cells from donor blood. But the process is expensive, about $50,000 per transplant, and requires three days of work by skilled personnel. Worse, the current technology still leaves a significant amount of body cells behind or alternatively, too few stem cells.

Thousands of companies and millions of researchers know what they can do with stem cells, but the raw material is the critical issue, Yarkoni says. How do you get enough stem cells to start the treatment?

Cellects stem-cell selection kit, a unique medical device originally conceived by Askenasy about a decade ago, could accomplish the task more effectively, and for a fraction of the cost.

The only tool thats needed is a biological hood, and these can be found even in developing countries. The process takes less than 10 hours and its simple to do, based on the natural process of cell death (apoptosis).

Read more:
Israeli stem-cell technology targets leukemia | ISRAEL21c

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