Martin Adolfsson
IF YOU were listing organs on which your life depends, you would probably overlook the placenta. Yet it plays a vital role in supporting a developing fetus, providing it with nutrients and oxygen, and removing waste products. Made from both fetal and maternal tissue, it is also a rich source of stem cells, which can turn into any cell needed by the body. Most placentas are discarded, but according to XPrize founder and space-flight entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, we could be missing a trick. He and Bob Hariri have set up a new company, Celularity, to harness placental cells. Diamandis has two young sons and says he hopes to live to meet his great-great-grandchildren. “My boys have the potential to live indefinitely. I think that’s something we’ll figure out in the next 10 to 20 years,” he says. Â鶹´«Ã½ met Diamandis and Hariri at the Unite to Cure conference on regenerative medicine at the Vatican last month.
What’s special about cells from the placenta?
Bob Hariri: First and foremost, they are incredibly young. I often argue that at the instant of birth, a healthy newborn has gone through nature’s quality control process. If the DNA wasn’t perfect, you wouldn’t have a viable offspring. So if you can recover those cells it’s like immediately freezing fruit off the tree. Clarence Birdseye said if I want fresh food, I have to freeze it at the site of harvesting. This is like the Birdseye of biology. And the beauty is we can store these cells with cryopreservation for decades. I actually believe that they are infinitely useful.
So should we all be keeping…
