Taiwan Today

Once upon a time, storing a baby’s umbilical cord in frozen nitrogen must have seemed an odd idea, if it was thought of at all. But all that changed in 1988, when French researchers told an astonished world that they had used stem cells from a newborn female baby’s cord blood to cure her six-year-old brother of his anemia.

Since then, cord blood has become one of the most discussed subjects in the scientific world.

The stem cells extracted from cord blood are more energetic than adult stem cells, and when planted into the bodies of a baby-grown-into-adult or his/her immediate family member, occurrences of cell rejection are rare.

Cord blood cells have already been proven successful in the treatment of genetic diseases, blood malignancies and immune deficiencies. In the future, as medical science advances, many more illnesses could also be cured using the same method, researchers believe. If the right matches can be found, cord blood can even be used to treat patients unrelated by blood to the original donors.

“Cord blood research is the hope of 21st-century medical science,” said Chang Hsiu-kang, now a 57-year-old pharmacist-turned entrepreneur. After spotting the potential of cord blood storage in 2000, he introduced the umbilical cord blood banking business to Taiwan by establishing HealthBanks Biotech Co. Ltd., now the largest private cord blood bank in Taiwan.

The company had a tough battle at the start. “With very few people having heard of ‘cord blood banking,’ we had to build up a completely new client base starting from scratch, by attending maternity fairs and holding forums in each and every town in Taiwan, even in remote villages located on offshore islets,” noted Carol Lee, assistant marketing supervisor of HealthBanks.

Since those early days the idea of storing cord blood has become more widely known, and as a result the cord blood of eight out of every 100 newborns in Taiwan is now preserved, one of the highest rates in Asia.

With greater acceptance of the practice has also come more competition—there are now eight cord blood companies on the island. But in spite of the competition, HealthBanks has retained its preeminent position.

For Chang, the secret to becoming the sector’s leader lies in dedication. “This is a business of life and death—giving a new life to patients while rescuing them from the hands of death. How can we not seek all possible ways to offer the most refined services?” he said.

HealthBanks is the only cord bank in Taiwan to have twice received silver medals from the National Biotechnology and Medical Care Quality Awards, once in 2007 and again in 2008.

The 2008-award was especially important, as the company won for its “umbilical cord blood mesenchymal stem cells storage” technique, which helps keep stem cells alive and kicking for a much longer period of time than had been possible.

Chang, who founded Purzer Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. prior to HealthBanks, is particularly strict about the management of laboratories. “For me, keeping the error rate to a minimum is my top priority, in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and in cord blood banking.”

Indeed, no fewer than eight accreditation agencies have acknowledged HealthBanks’ attention to detail, with the most prominent being perhaps the certificate given by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics.

Chang’s work ethic has also been acknowledged by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which awarded him with the “R&D and Management Innovation Award” in November 2009.

HealthBanks started branching overseas in 2005, first by establishing HealthBaby Biotech Co. Ltd., a subsidiary company, in Hong Kong. It has since then captured an astonishing 70 percent of the market share in Hong Kong, according to a market survey conducted in September 2009 by Synovate Ltd.

The company also expanded its operations to the United States last April, when it opened up PacifiCord, another subsidiary, in Irvine, California. Chang said he expects the U.S. branch to become profitable sometime this autumn.

Chang is sure of his business expansion plan. “In the next decade, I expect the HealthBanks Group to increase its revenues by five times. By then, the cord blood of between 20 and 30 percent of newborns will also probably be stored,” the president said.

“In the meantime, I will continue setting up overseas subsidiaries, which should eventually churn up 90 percent of the company’s earnings, to make HealthBanks the largest cord blood bank—not only in Taiwan, but in the whole world.”

The company still has a few technical issues to resolve before it can claim to truly have succeeded in its mission.

One issue, perhaps its central most intractable problem to date, has to do with the amount of cord blood stored. On average only 60 cubic centimeters of blood per cord can be stored, which is simply not enough to cure most adult illnesses.

To overcome this problem, Healthbanks, like all other dedicated biotechnology institutions, has been working on “vitro proliferation,” which allows stem cells to grow outside human tissues.

“The technology will take five to 10 years to mature,” Chang noted. “But we are on the way to achieving it.”

Another problem lies in the validity period of cord blood, which raises the question of whether it is worthwhile to reserve blood at all. After all, it is likely that when the stored cells are needed in the future, they may not be usable anymore.

“Indeed, scientists today are still not sure of the actual validity span of umbilical cord blood. But over the last two decades of cord blood research, cases have shown that it will at least be applicable for 15 years,” said Chang.

“What we can do is to try our best to prolong the time span with scientific methods, such as storing the blood at minus 196 degrees Celsius in nitrogen tanks, where drastic chemical or physical changes are unlikely, to help more needed people.”

On top of all, cord blood banking is considered by many critics to favor only the rich. A debate has been going for years now in the United Kingdom and European Union, over whether public cord banks should be established along with private ones. Some critics maintain that if more people can afford cord banks, a much wider range of illnesses could be cured.

At the moment the high cost of cord blood banking on the island, with fees starting from NT$60,000 (US$1,900), has been prohibitively expensive for many families in Taiwan, who are thus deprived of what could potentially be a life-saving opportunity.

Chang noted, rightly, that parents should have the right to reserve the umbilical cords of their own children. At the same time, he has also worked to make the procedure more widely available. He has established a charitable public cord bank designed for less wealthy parents.

“For every 10 private clients we serve, we also preserve one cord blood sample for free,” Chang said. So far, 4,000 such reservations have been made, which have resulted in more than 300 successful matches worldwide.

For instance, a match was recently found between one cord blood sample and a patient in Austria with lymphoma leukemia. The cord blood sample was flown to Austria March 18, said Chen Wei-tsun, vice president of the company.

Chang has enjoyed the challenges, rewards and chances to carry out altruistic deeds along the way, and he sees the potential of umbilical cord blood in the 21st century as “infinite.” With continuous efforts and a will to serve the needed public, Chang aspires to make HealthBanks shine in the decades to come. (HZW)

Write to Tien-ying Hsu at: tyhsu@mail.gio.gov.tw