Recovering from cancer thanks to cells from her umbilical cord

Alba Ramirez is the first person to undergo an autologous stem cells transplant from her own umbilical cord. The operation took place on July 12, 2009 in the Niño Jesús Hospital in Madrid. The girl from Cadiz, born in San Fernando, suffered a brain tumor,more specifically medulloblastoma, a grade 4 tumor, which was removed in surgery, but not in its entirety.
 Because of the stem cells transplant from her own umbilical cord, she has experienced appreciable improvements that make her parents feel more hopeful about the recovery of their daughter.
 Although the little girl was born healthy on February 9, 2007, her parents decided to freeze her umbilical cord to a private entity to preserve this way her stem cells.This decision was providential, because at 22 months old Alba suffered from a tumor and even if she had surgery ,her prognosis were not very good.
Luis Madero, head of the hospital Oncohematology Service, told El Pais that the illness of the little girl had a peculiarity. Being a solid tumor, was likely to be treated with stem cells transplant. If it was a leukemia,a cancer more common in children, this treatment option would have been more problematic, since this type of cancer usually has a genetic origin, so the tumor would already have been in the umbilical cord blood. Teresa Molina, the mother of the child, argues that from the moment they decided to freeze the umbilical cord of Alba, unknowingly they signed a “life insurance” for her.

Source: http://www.topbuzznews.net