Immunotherapy is a relatively recent interest for scientists (when we say recent, think a couple of decades old!). It usually involves the application of certain drugs, which either spark action in the immune system, or “turn it off” so it doesn’t react to anything. While this can help treat certain conditions, there are many negative side effects of being treated with drugs. And this is where cord blood immunotherapy is an excellent alternative.
It’s a much more natural and safe option than immunotherapy drugs. While drugs may be used together with cord blood immunotherapy, it still offers a much better chance of success!
Still not totally sure about it? Here’s some more information on how cord blood immunotherapy can save lives.
What Is Immunotherapy?
As its name suggests, immunotherapy is a type of treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to help with healing. There are two specific ways that immunotherapy can use the immune system:
- It can activate and strengthen the immune system,
- Or, it can suppress the immune system.
Activation immunotherapies bolster the immune system so it can fight against the invading disease. Suppression immunotherapies essentially turn the immune system off to give the body space for receiving external treatment without fighting against itself.
The Problem with Traditional Immunotherapy
The idea of either stimulating or “switching off” the immune system to allow for healing is logical. However, there’s one problem with this kind of therapy. Most often, it relies on some type of drug being administered.
The drug then affects the immune system in a certain way, either causing the body to fight harder or making it go to sleep so external drugs can come in and do their thing.
But there’s an easy-to-spot problem with this. Administering an extra drug can have a variety of negative effects on the body. In many cases, the patient is already on other medication, which then just adds more chemicals to the body.
While traditional immunotherapy does have plenty of positive evidence behind it, there’s always a risk that comes with using drug-based therapies.
The added chemicals have the potential to worsen the patient’s condition and weaken the body even more. It’s a sad fact that cancer often involves an overload of synthetic medication, which can take a bad toll on the body in addition to the disease.
How Is Cord Blood Immunotherapy Different?
The good news is that drug-based immunotherapy isn’t the only way you can go. Cord blood immunotherapy is completely natural and, in most cases, uses the body’s own cells to treat diseases and conditions.
No drugs, far less chance for failure or negative reactions, completely all-natural, and highly effective! What more could you need from a treatment?
These factors put cord blood immunotherapy at the top of the list when it comes to immunotherapy options. The much lower health risk substantially reduces the chances of the patient worsening and significantly increases the chance of success.
Literally, saving lives by removing the risk of a chemical overload or a failed transplant!
Why Is Cord Blood So Effective?
The cells found in umbilical cord blood are extremely unique. They’re the purest form of cells you can find and they’re also plastic – meaning they can transform into just about any cell in the body.
That means cord blood can be used not to give as treatment, but literally to create the very cells needed in the body to treat certain disorders.
No other cell in the human body has this ability, and neither does any man-made organism! Saving your baby’s umbilical cord blood is literally the only chance you have to harvest these incredible cells that have such life-saving properties.
Creating New Cells from Cord Blood
As well as being able to fit right back into the body and create new cells out of nothing, cord blood can actually be used in the laboratory to create cells.
Scientists can use cord blood to create the very cells needed in the body to fight certain diseases. Instead of applying them via a transplant and waiting for the stem cells to transform within the body, the exact cells can be created and applied, making treatment more effective.
To give you an idea of just a few applications of this stem cell-rich blood, scientists have already been able to create these cells from cord blood:
- T-Regs: Regulatory T-cells, which control the immune system response
- VST: Virus-specific T-cells, which target certain viruses in the body
- CAR-T: Chimeric antigen receptor modified T-cells, which are used in cancer treatment
- CTL: Cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which seek out and kill harmful cells
- NK and CAR-NK: Natural killer cells, which detect and kill virus-infected cells
In Conclusion
Cord blood immunotherapy is an extremely valuable tool in the fight against many different diseases and disorders. And cord blood banking such an easy, simple, and non-invasive thing, that every parent should be taking advantage of it!
Who knows – your child’s life may be saved by their own cord blood stem cells one day. In the long run, is it worth keeping those special cells aside in case you may need them? Absolutely.
Contact us today to find out what options are available for cord blood banking. We’d love to help you protect your child’s health and future!
Source: https://parentsguidecordblood.org/en/news/current-uses-cord-blood-immunotherapy