Placental Tissue Stem Cells To Treat Mothers

You’ve heard about umbilical cord blood and tissue banking, but what about placental tissue banking?

The placenta is a pancake-shaped organ that’s attached to the mother and the baby (through the umbilical cord) during pregnancy. It’s responsible for the transfer of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the fetus and also for the production of many pregnancy supporting hormones.

Your placenta is baby’s life support system during their nine months in the womb.  It transfers blood, oxygen, and nutrients from you to baby and removes waste and toxins from baby’s blood.  Your placenta produces important pregnancy hormones, protecting against infections, and providing immunity for your unborn baby.

Your placenta is extremely important, even after baby is born.  It contains mesenchymal stems cells (MSCs), a source of potential treatments for a wide range of diseases, many of which until now are incurable or have severely limited treatment options.  MSCs are ‘multipotent’, meaning they can produce several types of specialized cells, such as cartilage, bone, and fat cells that can repair damage from illness or injury.

MSCs can be collected and cryogenically stored for potential future use.  Unlike stem cells from cord blood and cord tissue, which are a perfect genetic match to baby and a partial genetic match to other family members, stem cells from placental tissue are perfect match to you.  Like baby’s stem cells they may also be a partial match to your children, siblings, and parents.

When you bank your placental tissue, you’re affording yourself the opportunity to store cells that have promising and unique potential uses, with more discovered every day.  Although there are no currently approved treatments using stem cells from placental tissue, there are numerous clinical trials underway investigating its benefits in treating Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Spinal Cord Injuries, Immune System Disorders, and Liver Disease.

Because it’s a relatively new field of investigation, most research on MSCs from placental tissue is in the preclinical stages, exploring safety and efficacy.

Immune System Disorders: MSCs from placenta storage were proven to have superior immune properties compared to MSCs from the umbilical cord making them better suited to treating immune disorders like Type 1 diabetes, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.

Alzheimer’s: In a South Korean clinical study on mice, MSCs from placental tissue improved memory, enhanced their resistance to brain inflammation and slowed their disease progression.  The researchers concluded that “the findings strongly support the therapeutic potential and clinical use of Placenta Derived-MSCs in Alzheimer’s diseases.”

Multiple Sclerosis:  Using a similar approach as the Alzheimer’s trial, researchers used MSCs from placental tissue to treat multiple sclerosis in mice. The treatment slowed the progression of the disease and reduced the immune response the body usually mounts against nerve cells.

Liver Disease: Two animal studies using MSCs from placental tissue to treat liver damage and acute liver failure showed the treatment reduced inflammation, increased liver cell regeneration, and promoted liver repair.

Spinal cord injuries: A research study in mice successfully induced placental derived MSCs to become neural stem cells and promoted recovery of motor and sensory functions.  Scientists are hopeful to replicate these results in human clinical trials, helping to repair spinal cord injuries without causing rejection.

Hearing loss: Using placenta derived MSCs for hearing loss is still in its infancy. A recent study involving animals with sensorineural hearing loss, found that the treatment regenerated cell regeneration and reversed auditory impairment.

Diabetes: Also noteworthy is the research exploring how MSCs, like those found in placental tissue, can help treat chronic skin ulcers in Type 1 diabetics.  Half of these painful skin wounds are resistant to every available treatment.  In preclinical trials, diabetic wounds treated with MSCs showed noteworthy measurable improvement.

Ischemic Diseases: A study published 2016 highlighted the promise MSCs have shown in treating conditions where blood supply to specific organs or tissues is restricted, such as ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, and diabetes foot ulcers.  In the study, MSCs were shown to modulate inflammatory and immune responses, reduce cell death, promote growth of new blood vessels, and increase blood flow. Placental tissue is acknowledged in recent medical literature as one of the viable sources of MSCs for these treatments.

Clinical trials using MSCs are also underway to treat a number of other conditions, including Stroke, Crohns Disease, Hemorrhagic Cystitis, Scleroderma, Aplastic Anemia, and Graft vs. Host Disease.

If you’ve decided to bank your placental tissue and signed up for a plan, you’ll receive a Collection Kit with everything you need to collect and ship your placenta to Americord’s lab for processing and storage.

The collection process is simple and poses no risk or pain to you or baby. Before baby is born, the nurse or midwife will collect some blood samples that we will later test at our lab for certain diseases, as mandated by federal regulation.

After baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut, the doctor or midwife transfers your placenta to the collection kit and returns it to you, along with any other cord blood or cord tissue collected.  You’ll seal up the kit and call the medical courier for bedside pick-up.  The courier then rushes the kit to our laboratory for processing.

Our lab dissects your placenta and collects tissue for stem cell extraction.  They clean the tissue to remove any contamination and process it to isolate the mesenchymal stem cells.  The cells are prepared for cryogenic preservation and stored in vials for the exclusive use of your baby and family, whenever they’re needed for treatment.

If you think Placenta Tissue banking is right for you and your family, schedule your placental tissue banking consultation with one of Americord’s Cord Blood and Tissue Specialists.

Sources:

• Talwadekar, M., Kale, V., & Limaye, L. (2015). Placenta-derived mesenchymal stem cells possess better immunoregulatory properties compared to their cord-derived counterparts–a paired sample study. Scientific Reports, 5(1).
• NCBI: Placenta-derived mesenchymal stem cells improve memory dysfunction in an Aβ1–42-infused mouse model of Alzheimer's disease
•  Jung, J., Choi, J. H., Lee, Y., Park, J., Oh, I., Hwang, S., Kim, K., & Kim, G. J. (2013). Human Placenta-Derived mesenchymal stem cells promote hepatic regeneration in CCL4-Injured rat liver model via increased autophagic mechanism. Stem Cells, 31(8), 1584–1596.
• Cao, H., Yang, J., Yu, J., Pan, Q., Li, J., Zhou, P., Li, Y., Pan, X., Li, J., Wang, Y., & Li, L. (2012). Therapeutic potential of transplanted placental mesenchymal stem cells in treating Chinese miniature pigs with acute liver failure. BMC Medicine, 10(1).
•  Hindawi: Hematopoietic and Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Biomedical and Clinical Applications
•  NCBI, Pubmed: Regenerative efficacy of mesenchymal stromal cells from human placenta in sensorineural hearing loss
• Journal of Stem Cell Research and Therapy : Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Its Main Complications: From Experimental Findings to Clinical Practice
•  Calendly.com/sarah

The views, statements, and pricing expressed are deemed reliable as of the published date. Articles may not reflect current pricing, offerings, or recent innovations.