AT THE Singapore General Hospital (SGH), which has been pioneering efforts in cord blood research here, 16 cord blood transplants have been performed on adults, said Dr William Hwang, consultant haematologist and transplant physician at the hospital.

Most had leukaemia and, in all cases, chemotherapy had failed, he said.

'This is still a relatively new area, but some new studies have shown that cord blood transplants have an equivalent or even better outcome than the more established bone marrow transplants,' said Dr Hwang, who is also medical director of the Singapore Cord Blood Bank.

Overseas, researchers using cells found in cord blood have shown that the cells can be coaxed to grow into bone, cartilage, blood, neural, liver and heart tissue. So they may one day help to heal even ailing organs such as brains, livers and hearts.

SGH doctors are working on a project to grow the stem cells found in cord blood, because what is taken from the umbilical cord is sometimes insufficient to help adults.

Another method being refined there to overcome the lack of stem cells is to pool cord blood samples.

As an indicator of its increasing importance, cord blood will be presented as a major topic this year at the American Society of Haematology conference in the United States, considered the premier conference on blood diseases.

Even before the public cord blood bank is launched, more than 2,500 people have stored umbilical cord blood in two private banks here, in case they or their family members need it in future.

Only a handful have needed to use it so far.

Private and public facilities could complement each other, said Mr Steven Fang, group CEO of CyGenics, which runs the CordLife bank here. The company, of which he is chief executive, is working on a model to combine them.

It is starting clinical trials on stem cell expansion in Australia. If successful, this would allow a client to keep some cells for his own use, while making other cells available to a public bank.