Department of Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine

This lab was developed in 2004 with a FACScan machine (BD, USA) presented by Prof. R. M. Zinkernagel’s (Nobel laureate -1996) lab from Zurich. This was replaced by a new Facscalibur (BD, USA) purchased in the year 2015.

Main research here is in measuring tolerance parameters like natural suppressor cells, T-regs, B-regs, chimerism, other T-cell and B-cell sub-types as well as identifying and quantifying different kinds of stem cells. FISH lab has also been established with NIKON station, from Japan. In addition to chimerism studies across gender mismatched donors, this lab will also be expanding its research in areas of oncology and genetics.

Stem Cell Lab

It was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shree Narendra Modi (now the Prime Minister of India) on 11th November, 2005 when the fourth International Congress on Kidney Diseases was ongoing. This lab is the oldest lab of the country. Research and applications related to stem cells were established in 1996 here and gradually developed its wings more since 1998.

It has an experienced staff that has worked with human embryonic stem cell lines, cord blood stem cells, hematopoietic stem cells and human adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSC). However due to various controversies related to embryonic stem cells this project has been abandoned. The other drawback was young women of childbearing age are potentially at risk of abuse. Similar was the fact with umbilical cord blood. Hence much simpler easy protocols have been established in this lab from the most easily available resource which is human fat and there should be no problem of availability of donors for this purpose since they are always at an advantage of removing unwanted fat with minimal risk. They have generated mesenchymal stem cells from adipose tissue.

This lab has generated 2 patents:

• A Method of Preparing Mesenchymal Stem Cells From Adipose Tissue, patent number 269775, dtd 5th November, 2015; Govt. of India
• Human adipose derived insulin making mesenchymal stem cells for treating diabetes mellitus- patent number 272069, dtd 16th March, 2016; Govt. of India

Now there are well established protocols available in this lab for culturing mesenchymal stem cells from adipose tissue and culturing bone marrow for developing and differentiating in to hematopoietic stem cells. The results with traumatic paraplegia are very encouraging. Research for generation of other stem cells and their applications is in progress. They have won several awards and prizes for innovative work related to stem cell research and therapy in national and international conferences.