This procedure is being studied experimentally at the present time in patients with cancer. Cord Blood Transplantation Cord Blood Transplantation is an alternate means of transplanting healthy stem cells into the thalassemia patient's body. Cord blood is taken from the umbilical cord and placenta immediately following birth and then frozen and stored at a cord blood center for later use in stem cell transplantation. As such, there appears to be a lower instance of rejection in cord blood transplantation. To correct transfusion-dependent anemia in thalassemia, the objective of gene therapy is to insert a normal beta globin gene into the patient's stem cells, thus allowing for increased production of beta globin and the production of healthy red blood cells.
Gene therapy is still far from being applied to human subjects in a clinical setting.
Stem cells tend to behave differently in laboratory cultures outside the human body and lose their ability to reproduce over long periods of time. Scientists must find ways of helping stem cells keep their reproductive capabilities in research settings. Currently, the methods used to transfer the replacement gene into stem cells require the cell to be actively dividing. Most stem cells are in their non-dividing phase most of the time and thus are not receptive to gene transfer. Researchers have induced stem cells to divide in order to make more frequent gene transfer possible, but the results have largely been unsuccessful.