AGOURA HILLS, Calif., June 2 (UPI) -- A California firm is offering healthy adults the chance to bank their own stem cells against the day they may need them to fight a serious illness.
NeoStem seeks to capitalize on the emergence of stem-cell therapy as standard treatment for many kinds of leukemia and lymphoma.
Stem cells are unspecialized cells found in the blood and bone marrow that are capable of generating various human tissues.
In a treatment for lymphoma, for example, stem cells are taken from a patient's blood or bone marrow before chemotherapy, and then the stem cells are returned to the body to stimulate growth of healthy new blood cells.
Some research suggests stem-cell therapy may one day be useful in treating everything from heart disease to spinal-cord injury to radiation sickness.
For $5,000 NeoStem will draw stem cells from the blood and bone marrow of healthy adults and store them.
