A college student from Shanghai who has leukaemia received the
blood stem cells of a farmer from Southwest China yesterday in the
first of two potentially life-saving transplant operations in
Beijing.
It was the first such operation carried out through
cross-provincial co-ordination by the China Stem Cell Donor
Information Resources organization. The operation was done in two
parts at two Beijing hospitals attached to the People's Liberation
Army.
Yesterday morning, doctors with the army's Hospital No. 301
spent three hours extracting 100 millimeters of peripheral blood
stem cells from the donor. The cells were transplanted in the
afternoon at the army's Hospital No. 307.
Both the patient and the donor were doing well last night.
Another 100 millimeters of blood stem cells will be transplanted
today.
The 20-year-old patient Chen Bo, a student at the Shanghai
Institute of Foreign Trade, was last year diagnosed with chronic
myeloid leukaemia, an illness that deprived him of the ability to
generate new blood.
"The only way to save Chen's life is allogenous transplant (from
a donor)," said Chen Hu, an expert with the army's Hospital No.
307. "It requires a healthy person whose blood cells match Chen's
to donate 200 milliliters of blood stem cells."
A suitable donor was found in June after the donor information
organization carried out a nationwide search for a blood match.
The donor is Hu Yugao, a peasant-turned-migrant worker from
Southwest China's Yunnan
Province. He happened to be passing a mobile blood-donation van
in East China's Zhejiang
Province and was offered information about his blood.
After a health check, he signed an agreement last Thursday to
say he would donate the stem cells. Hu smiled calmly at the
operating table yesterday even though he was tired after undergoing
four days of injections to get the stem cells to move into his
peripheral blood.
Thanks to scientific advances, donating stem cells, like
donating blood, does not harm the donor, said Shen Dehuang, an
official with the donor information group.
After 100 millimeters of blood stem cells was collected
yesterday, Hu's blood flowed back into his body through special
medical instruments.
(China Daily August 13, 2003)