THE old philosophy of “body heal thyself” has been given a new high-tech twist with a treatment for liver failure that uses bone marrow stem cells from the patient’s own blood.
To obtain the cells, the patient is first given an injection of a chemical called granulocyte colony stimulating factor (GCSF), which stimulates their bone marrow to produce extra stem cells. After five days on the drug, the patient’s blood is screened for cells bearing the surface protein CD34, which marks them out as stem cells. These are then extracted from the blood, concentrated and injected into the patient’s portal…
