StemCyte India Therapeutics, a unit of StemCyte Inc., USA, will open more centres across India to collect umbilical cord blood (UCB) units and go for public banking of stem cells in a big way for treatment of diseases like thalassemia and other disorders.

StemCyte, the only company in India in stem cell business to offer public and private banking, therapeutics and stem cell transplants with UCB stem cells, will build over 5,000 public inventories of UCB units with focus on more transplants in the next 2-3 years, Kenneth J Giacin, Chairman and Director, StemCyte Inc., said here on Thursday.

The global market for cord blood therapeutics was estimated at $ 6.5 billion in 2012 and is expected to grow at 33.4% CAGR in the 2013-20 period. In India, its market is at a nascent stage.

The Indian company, which signed an MoU during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2007, is a joint venture between StemCyte Inc., Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd and Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. It invested Rs 50 crore in setting up at Ahmedabad the country’s only UCB storage centre, that became operational in 2010, said Deepak Chhabra, COO, StemCyte India.

He appealed to gynecologists, hospitals and parents to store umbilical cords in a big way for use in future. In other countries, governments support public banking of UCBs but India is yet to catch up.

So far, the centre has been able to store only about 1,000 public umbilical cord blood units and performed 30 umbilical transplants although 10,000 thalassamia patients are born annually.

Units from collection centres from across urban India are flown in special kits within 24 hours of childbirth to Ahmedabad for storage in liquid nitrogen at minus 197 degrees Celsius for 21 years. As in blood banks, the client can retrieve stem cells when necessary, he said.

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