The critical list

Roowalla,who has been working in the stem cell industry since 2005,hit upon the idea of creating a database of bone marrow donors to be made available to doctors in April last year. In order to do so,he started his own private database and has been cataloguing donors ever since. “A donor can log onto http://www.cellsource.in and contact me. We usually take the donor’s blood samples to check for communicable diseases and then conduct a HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) test to determine the type and quality of the bone marrow,” says Roowalla. He reveals that even though there are stem cells and cord cell banks in the country,there are very few places that maintain a database of donors. “The main problem that hampers a recipient is that there is no knowledge about the availability of a donor,” he says.

Every test costs R14,000 per person,an amount Roowalla pays for himself. The roadblock in the way of a business model here is that the data is highly sensitive and is not available readily on the Internet. “In fact,I give out the data to the doctors who require a certain bone marrow type and then the doctor contacts the recipient and we contact the donor. All the medical expenses of the donor and his stay at the hospital are borne by the recipient.” At the end,the profit margin is somewhere between R 30,000-40,000. “A normal recipient may have to shell out anywhere in between R 2.5-5 lakhs,depending upon the case.”

Roowalla,however,admits that getting the infrastructure in place is difficult and that investors are few. “Around 30 per cent of the transplants are sought by relatives of the donors,but around 70 per cent are done through external donors. As of now,I have only 11 donors registered on my database. I am hopeful that through bone marrow collection drives,the number will increase,” he says.