Stemade Biotech announced the launch of its dental stem cell collection centres in Chennai today.
Dental stem cell banking involves extracting viable stem cells and having them preserved in special cryogenic storage facilities (hired from LifeCell). Mr Shailesh Gadre, Managing Director, Stemade, said in contrast to umbilical cord blood banking where stem cells are obtained from the cord of a newly born child, this option allows an individual a larger window to harvest and store stem cells that have the potential to shield individuals from critical health concerns that may rise in the future.
Dental pulp stem cells can be obtained from the milk teeth of children just before they fall off. Alternatively, “if your dentist advised a wisdom tooth extraction, you can get your own stem cells extracted from it and stored,” he added.
These stem cells are said to have been proven highly regenerative bearing the capacity to be transformed into many different types of precursor cells of the sold connective tissues of the body, he said.
Currently a huge amount of active medical research is under way for using these stem cells for therapy applications such as bone, cartilage and liver regeneration.
Collections centres
The company has a total of 75 such collections centres across Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.
The company charges Rs 60,000 initially as processing fee per person and Rs 6,000 a year towards storage charges.