StemCyte, Inc. Surpasses 250th Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplant

ARCADIA, Calif., Jan. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- StemCyte, Inc., a privately held stem cell therapy and cord blood bank, with highly accredited processing and storage facilities in both the U.S. and Taiwan, recently contributed its 250th cord blood stem cell unit for transplant. This marks another milestone in the company's rapid growth as one of the world's leading providers of quality cord blood stem cell units. StemCyte has now provided cord blood units to over 90 transplant centers worldwide across 5 continents, with the number of units released for transplantation increasing at a rapid rate.

Cord blood stem cell units are increasingly becoming a viable alternative to bone marrow transplants for the treatment of over 70 diseases, including leukemias, lymphomas, immune diseases and genetic disorders.

"This is an especially exciting time for the cord blood stem cell industry as now more and more transplant centers are using cord blood for both children and adult transplantations," says StemCyte's CEO Ken Giacin. "We are also seeing broader application far beyond leukemia. For example, StemCyte has now provided 29 cord blood stem cell units for 24 children with thalassemia, with several receiving double cord blood transplants, a very exciting and cutting edge protocol. Our concerted effort against thalassemia represents one of the largest unrelated cord blood transplant clinical efforts for this disease in the world, and our units have achieved an unprecedented 90% successful engraftment and survival rate."

Similar to sickle cell anemia, thalassemia is a debilitating blood disease, which affects both the patient's quality of life and life expectancy and affects hundreds of thousands of patients a year worldwide, especially in Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions.

"We are very pleased with the growing vote of confidence that is being extended to StemCyte by transplant physicians around the world," said Lawrence D. Petz, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, StemCyte International Cord Blood Center, and Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, UCLA Medical Center Los Angeles. "Our consistently excellent one-year patient survival data continue to point to both the increasing level of transplant physician care as well as to the high degree of efficacy of our cord blood units."

To find out more visit StemCyte online at http://www.stemcyte.com.

About StemCyte, Inc.

StemCyte, Inc., headquartered in Arcadia, California, intends to create the largest donor umbilical cord blood stem cell bank in the world. StemCyte and its subsidiaries are dedicated to providing high quality, cost-effective, stem cell transplantation and therapy to all patients in need. StemCyte, Inc.'s management team consists of medical, scientific, clinical laboratory, tissue typing, blood banking and stem cell professionals and experts, most of whom have been recruited from world-renowned medical institutions such as Harvard Medical School, UCLA, American Red Cross, City of Hope, and others. Because of its ability to deliver high quality and high quantity viable cord blood stem cells, StemCyte is a key choice for transplant centers around the world. StemCyte has provided cord blood units to hospitals and transplant centers in the United States as well as in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Spain and Taiwan. StemCyte donor banks have now supplied cord blood units for more than 250 life-saving transplants in just a few short years.

CONTACT: David Carmel of StemCyte, Inc., +1-917-414-4121

Web site: http://www.stemcyte.com/