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  In 2009, Svitlana Shevchenko was preparing for the birth of her first child in the Ukraine town of Kryvyi Rih, when doctors diagnosed her unborn baby with congenital heart defects. She did not want to believe this was correct. It was the 20th week of pregnancy, but the doctors said they were certain, and they strongly recommended terminating the pregnancy. 
“I couldn’t even hear about that!” – Svitlana recalls - “How can you get rid of a child that you feel inside yourself every second, listen to its movements and already love more than anything in the world.” 
Svitlana went to the city of Kherson for an additional assessment, and from there she was immediately sent to a hospital in the capital city Kyiv. All the doctors were talking about heart defects. In the capital’s Center of Children’s Cardiology and Cardiosurgery, the final diagnosis of the congenital heart defects sounded like a death sentence: ventricular septal defect and transposition of the great vessels. 
Therefore, when Svitlana was told about the possibility of performing surgery on her son’s heart shortly after birth using umbilical cord blood, she did not hesitate for a moment. 
On September 25, 2009, Svitlana gave birth to Ilya in Maternity Home #5 in Kyiv, where the institution’s specialists provided a high level of safety over the course of childbirth. The boy was immediately taken to the Center of Children’s Cardiology and Cardiosurgery, where he had open-heart surgery a few days later. During surgery, Ilya’s own umbilical cord blood was used to provide circulation through the heart-lung machine, instead of relying on donor blood. The surgery went well. The mom and the baby were discharged from the hospital promptly. Ilya started recovering faster than other children did after similar surgeries.
 Right now in Ukraine, for every 1000 newborns there are from 7 to 14 children born with congenital heart defects; half of them require surgical intervention in the first days of life.
 
 Specialists at the Center of Children’s Cardiology and Cardiosurgery, in partnership with biotechnological expertise from HEMAFUND, were the first ones in the world to use umbilical cord blood during surgeries on the hearts of newborns. The idea of using the child’s own umbilical cord blood instead of donor blood in newborn heart surgery was developed jointly by cardiac surgeon Ilya Emetz and the founder of HEMAFUND Yaroslav Isakov. Compared to donated adult blood, the newborn’s umbilical cord blood is enriched with additional chemicals and stem cells, is saturated with oxygen, and does not create an additional load on the immune system of the patient. Today this technique is known to pediatric heart surgeons across the world as the HEMAFUND CorD Program, and is approved by the Ukraine Ministry of Health as protocol #619 from 23.07.2010. 
Now Ilya is 10 years old. The boy is cheerful and active. “So lively and active that sometimes it annoys me,” Svitlana laughs. Medical indications prohibit Ilya to engage in sports professionally, but Ilya rides a bicycle and a Penny skateboard with pleasure, and adores soccer. Every year the Shevchenko family brings their son for routine examination to the Kyiv Center of Children’s Cardiology and Cardiosurgery. The results comfort the parents, and Ilya is captivated by the beauty of the capital of Ukraine and dreams of moving to live from Kryvyi Rih to Kyiv.
 “Now I don’t even want to remember the pain and fear we had to endure” Svitlana admits - “I only advise everyone I know to store umbilical cord blood to take care of the protection of children. Because I do not forget about my gratitude to the doctors of the cardiology center and specialists from HEMAFUND who helped save my son!”
 

  Henrique’s mother says, “Fourteen years ago, when I was pregnant with Guilherme, a family member told us about stem cell cryopreservation and Crioestaminal. People were starting to talk about this option in Portugal, but we found the idea interesting mainly because science is evolving so quickly and we didn't know what the future held. It was a different health insurance.”
 “When Henrique was born 9 years later, we decided to save the cells again, not only for the sake of equality between our children, but also because we continue to believe that the future of some areas of medicine can pass through stem cells. Both pregnancies proceeded normally and without any problems, and both boys were born and raised healthy, so nothing made us predict Henrique´s disease.” 
Aplastic anemia is a rare and serious disease that occurs when the patient’s bone marrow fails to produce enough blood cells, causing anemia, bleeding, and infections. Most of the time, the cause is unknown. It is suspected that aplastic anemia can be triggered when the body over-reacts to an infection, and develops an auto-immune attack on the bone marrow. There are only 2-7 cases of aplastic anemia per million people in a year. When aplastic anemia does develop, the only way to stop it is to reset the immune system with a stem cell transplant. 
Henrique is a typical toddler who likes dinosaurs, building games, and superheroes. He also likes to watch TV, especially Paw Patrol. Last winter, when Henrique became very sick with aplastic anemia, he was first hospitalized at Dona Estefânia Pediatric Hospital in Lisbon. In preparation for his transplant, Henrique was transferred to the Lisbon Instituto Português de Oncologia (IPO), where he underwent chemotherapy. 
Henrique’s cord blood was the 10th sample released by Crioestaminal for the treatment of a Portuguese child. 
The transplant took place at IPO on 5 April 2019, and afterwards Henrique’s white blood cell count and other hematological parameters began to recover rapidly. Henrique was discharged from the hospital within a month after the transplant, but he is still followed closely by his medical teams at IPO and the pediatric hospital. The doctors are very pleased with Henrique's clinical evolution and consider the outcome of his transplant gratifying. 
 
The second photo taken in summer 2019 shows Henrique, age 4, with his 13-year-old brother Guilherme. Henrique often wears a mask in public places to protect him from germs while his immune system is rebuilding.
 Henrique’s mother says, “Luckily we made a good choice in cryopreserving stem cells.” 
 

This 3-day congress provided a good opportunity for all delegates of Islamic countries to find out more about each other and cone their fields of common interests so that they could draw up road map of future goals and perspectives to be seized in future. During the last B2B meeting held, in which all participants made their presence, the members reached to this comprehensive consensus to take crucial steps to tackle with all obstacles ahead in order to provide nations of the world with a suitable health conditions in the light of Health Tourism Industry Principles.

 During this 3-day event, a delegation from Royan Stem Cell Technology Company, including members from commercial, health Tourism and public relation department, in an accompany with Managing Director of Royan Stem Cell Technology Company (RSCT), made their presence in various B2B meetings held both at the venue of the exhibition and offices of clients in Muscat. 
RSCT delegation was also hosted and welcomed by Mr.Totoonchi in Iran Embassy in Muscat through which Dr.Zarrabi represented a brief history of Royan Institutes and Royan Stem Cell Technology Company and Mr.Totoonchi, stating his honor and interests in the activities and achievements made by Royan and its affiliated segments by far.
RSCT is following its plans and agreements made during this event to finalize the agreement made and put the plans into act in near future.
 

Royan International Twin Congress

Royan International Twin Congress was held here in Tehran, Iran on 28^th to 30^th August 2019. It was the 20^th Congress on Reproductive Medicine and the 15^th Congress on Stem Cell Biology and Technology.

Royan Stem Cell Technology Company took part in this 3-day scientific event, holding up its stand along with other pharmaceutical companies. It provided the company to receive guests from other countries who were interested in establishing both scientific and commercial collaboration with Royan Stem Cell Technology Company in the realm of cord blood banking and other scientific and business related issues.

Royan Stem Cell Technology Company also hosted and entertained the congress guests to a dinner ceremony under a fully happy and friendly environment through which participants from other expertise could find time to share points of common interests in an atmosphere filled up with joy and refreshment.

 Itzel Cervantes was 6 years old when she underwent the cord blood transplant.  She had a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). The leukemia kept relapsing after chemotherapy, so that the only way to stop it was a stem cell transplant. But Itzel’s sibling was not a close enough HLA match for her, and a search through the national Be The Match registry failed to identify any donors for a bone marrow transplant. 

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Serge: “We became concerned when, after one, when he wouldn’t speak yet.” 
Lovie: “He wasn’t even saying ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’, so we started to become a little bit concerned… Finding out that our son was autistic, we were like fearful of what was going to happen to him in the future, and what his life might be. He didn’t really interact with other kids. They could play all around him, and it was like they didn’t exist. He was just in his own little world.” 
Serge: “It was sad, really really sad, and feeling hopeless, not knowing how to help. I started reading what autism is. Is there any kind of help?” 
Lovie: “We saw the clinical trial where they were looking for kids to participate, and it said that they had to have their own newborn cells. We kind of started reading about it, and it was like a plan.” 
CBR: Before Levi was born, Lovie and Serge decided to store his newborn stem cells with CBR. 
Lovie: “I was at the doctor’s office when I first saw the CBR pamphlet on the table. We wanted to do a little bit of research, so we went to the CBR website, and it listed out all the treatments that stem cells were being used for at the time.  It also listed out things that were being studied, and that helped us in making our decision.” 
Serge: “We looked on the price, and - why not? Let’s just have it, put it in the bank, and hopefully forget about it and never use it, but at least we’ll have it.” 
CBR: CBR connected the Motsnyy family to a clinical trial evaluating cord blood as a potential treatment for autism. 
Lovie: “It was just that realization that, Holy Smoke we stored his newborn cells. So there’s an answer right there, and we felt like, that our son has a chance at life. We went into the research study not knowing. We didn’t know if it would make a difference or not. And that if it didn’t, it still wouldn’t change our opinion of storing the cells and doing research; because how will we ever find out if something does work, if we don’t do more research for it? And even now, there’s so much more to uncover.” 
CBR: Between clinical trial visits, Levi participated in other therapies designed for children with autism. 
Lovie: “The research study itself was a year-long process, and over that time period, what we saw was just amazing. We’re thankful that CBR offered that kind of service, and that something within us told us to participate. Maybe telling the story will make people research for themselves and find all of the many diseases that can be treated using stem cells. 
 
CBR: What is their life like today? 
Serge: “He comes up and called me, ‘Oh hey Dad, look!’ He started talking.”
 Lovie: “The communication, the touching, the talking, so many things that he didn’t do and didn’t participate in, was actually no longer an issue.”
 Serge: “You don’t expect that health issues can hit you later, but investing into newborn cells is definitely one of those that gives you peace of mind. And that investment that we’ve done is life-changing.”
 Lovie: “It’s comforting, because that fear of ‘what’s going to happen when we’re gone?’ is no longer there. We don’t have to worry about who’s going to take care of him because he’s gonna be able to take care of himself. There is no greater feeling than knowing that he’s going to be okay.” 
 

According to RSCT Public Relation, Dr.Ashkan Mozdgir, Manager of RSCT Development and promotion Department, talking about their recent trip to Kurdistan Province, Iraq, stated:” During our trips to number of cities such as Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq, we evaluated the possibilities of representing RSCT services to the people and applicants over thee.
He added:” While in Erbil, we held a meeting with Farabi laboratory which has been RSCT representative since 2015 through which we evaluated the performance of the last two years and discussed the possibility of registering RSCT Company in Erbil.
Remarking this fact that right now patients from these provinces are referred to us to receive medical treatment services, Mozdgir stated:” Registering an office in these regions, patients will enjoy consultant services provided by this office which speed up representing our services to them.
He also added:” Through a meeting held with the Head of CMC Hospital, in Erbil, negotiation on holding up a representative office in hospital was run to transfer the cord blood samples to RSCT in Tehran, Iran. Utilizing Infertility treatment and IVF departments of this hospital was among other goals already set and discussed.
Making a trip to Sulaymaniyah, manager of RSCT Development and Promotion Department said:” During this trip we could hold up meetings with 4 hospitals including International, Royal, Suma and Zhyan through which the services provided by RSCT were represented and discussed such as cell therapy, CP treatment in particular, and also setting up sort of cooperation among gynecologists of both sides and introducing the infertility treatment department of Royan.
He pointed that International and Royal Hospitals have got their own infertility treatment departments. However, in case the patients demand some genetic consultancy, they will be referred to us. That is why we are trying to set up an office out there to not only organize such issues but also transfers the cord blood samples to Iran.
Mozdgir, finding the future of such negotiations so optimistic, said:” Opening offices in these two provinces, we will both facilitate patient transfer who seek for receiving infertility treatment and cell therapy services and also succeed in collecting and transferring cord blood samples to Iran.

 Alisa: “My husband and I went for fertility for three years, and we had our first son Preston. He was healthy, and wonderful, and we were so happy. And then Ashton came along.” 
Mayo: “I didn’t know how I was going to feel about it, because we worked so hard to get our first son. I thought it was awesome. And we had two sons.” 
Alisa: “So we were just ecstatic. Another baby. 
Mayo: “Ashton was born natural and normal. And then 6 weeks later he gets sick.” 
Alisa: “At 6 weeks old, Ashton became sick one night with RSV and pneumonia and we had him rushed into the hospital. His blood oxygen level went from 100% to zero.” 
Mayo: “I was more shocked than anything else: didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to think. How could this happen to my son?” 
Alisa: “The doctors kept working with him, and finally got his heart back.” 
Mayo: “Unfortunately, because of what happened to him, with the lack of oxygen to his brain, that’s what causes cerebral palsy, and that’s what he has. 
Alisa: “We had to look up what cerebral palsy was, we had no idea, you know, how bad it was. They really did extensive testing and said ‘there’s not much hope for activities in the future for him, physically or mentally’.  And we didn’t have total belief that Ashton’s body was going to ever either walk or be strong enough to balance.” 
Mayo: “It’s hard on a parent to have your son go through all that.” 
Alisa: “We needed a lot of physical help, because he’s getting bigger and heavier and it’s a lot of lifting on us. So we were looking for any type of help physically, for his physical condition, that we could get.”
 
 Mayo: “Before Ashton was born my wife brought this idea of saving his cord blood. And so she kept poking at me, poking at me, and she says, ‘You know, we should save it, you never know when he might need it.’” 
Alisa: “I brought it to my husband’s attention after reading all the positive testing they’ve done with stem cells, and I thought ‘Hey, why not?’.  Never once in my mind did I think my new baby would ever be ill enough to use his own stem cells.” 
Alisa: “Five years into Ashton’s life, we get paperwork saying they’re doing a study on children like Ashton who have cerebral palsy, using stem cells. So we decided to go ahead with it, and go ahead do it, and have Ashton infused with his own stem cells that we banked and see what the results would be. They ended up infusing him in his foot, through an IV, and the process didn’t take 20 minutes, if that.”
 Alisa: “Five months into it, we noticed Ashton regaining some strength and balance in his body. Then we noticed Ashton cognitively making his wants and needs clearly known to us.
 Mayo: “We go to his parent-teacher conference to find out how his progress is in school, and they’re telling us how he’s doing in school. I said ‘That’s all fine and dandy. How’s he doing with walking?’  Because I want to know if he’s walking.  Oh, his therapists look at each other and just laugh and they say ‘He’s walking every day here.’” 
Alisa: “So we saw balance, the school saw balance, and Ashton started walking and balancing. Ashton can walk.” 
Mayo: “He adapts and overcomes his disability. That’s what makes him a warrior, I believe. There’s nothing that he won’t do or try. He’ll play lacrosse with his brother. His brother is his best friend. He plays basketball. He’ll ride a bike. He drives his little power wheel around. You know what, he likes to swim.” 
 

Alisa: “Ashton was on a wheelchair bus for quite a long time. He fussed, and he cried, and he didn’t feel like the other kids because he was the only one on the wheelchair. Seeing him walk off that school bus and not be in a wheelchair means everything. Now he can walk into any facility with his head up. He smiles, he gives people high fives, he says ‘Hey, what’s up?’.  You know, he feels like one of the gang.” 
Mayo: “Don’t quit. You adapt and you overcome. My hero is my son. We received that letter from Viacord; I think it’s the best thing for my son. To see him accomplishing everything that he’s doing now, I attribute to the stem cell. I think everybody should look into it more often. If it’s done this for my son, it could do it for everybody else. Look at him today.” 
 

Since Nerea began to grow, certain motor difficulties appeared which required continuous work by the physiotherapists and a great effort for her family. When Nerea turned 5 years old, her parents received information from IVIDA, which talked about the autologous use (self-transplant) of umbilical cord blood stem cells to treat children with cerebral palsy. 
Victoria, Nerea's mother, contacted IVIDA after receiving this newsletter. This was in February 2016. From there on, we started working together to try to use Nerea’s cord blood unit, with the aim of helping her to improve the symptoms of her cerebral palsy. 
 
For a few months, we were jointly trying to get Nerea treated in a Spanish hospital. This was not possible, because the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices requested that Nerea be enrolled in a clinical trial, something that was not foreseen in Spain within the short term.
 It must be understood that the infusion with stem cells for the treatment of cerebral palsy is not a transplant, it is still considered an experimental treatment. That is why the Spanish Agency of Medicines proposed a clinical trial. We understood that the response of the Agency was perfectly reasonable.
 In order to avoid a detrimental delay in the possibilities of Nerea’s improvement, we next suggested that Nerea should be treated by the team of Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg at Duke University. Dr. Kurtzberg is a well-known and internationally recognized key opinion leader in cord blood therapy and she has conducted a randomized clinical trial using autologous umbilical cord blood units for the treatment of cerebral palsy. 
 
We contacted Dr. Kurtzberg’s team, and after several weeks of communication and a lot of work, finally, Nerea received an infusion of her own cord blood stem cells at Duke University Medical Center in the United States. This was in July 2017. 
One year and four months later, we contacted Victoria to follow up on Nerea's evolution. The embedded five-minute video describes the progress of her skills: 
When we started the activity of IVIDA Banco de Cordón in 2009, we did not visualize that we could help a girl with cerebral palsy to improve her quality of life. For IVIDA, this process has been very enriching and satisfying, and it encourages us even more to continue working in this field of umbilical cord blood stem cells. 

A delegation of Azerbaijan Medical University visited Royan Stem Cell Technology Company here on Sunday, 3rd, March, 2019 following previous meetings and talks held on some common interests. The delegation of Azerbaijan Medical University , including:

1. Dr.Rauf Baylarov - Vice-rector for academic affairs, associate professor in Department of Pediatric Diseases of Azerbaijan Medical University.
2. Dr.Orkhan Isayev - Dean for International students, associate professor in Department of Histology, embriology and cytology.

3. Dr.Mahammad Davudov - Head of Oral and maxillofacial surgery Department of Educational-surgical Clinic of Azerbaijan Medical University.

 held their meeting at Royan Stem Cell Technology company where the general and technical presentations were made honorably to them so that they got familiar with various features of company and got oriented with the company capabilities in different fields of activities. The meeting also provided a good chance for both parties to find out about their mutual fields of interests in which both sides showed an eager to launch bilateral projects accordingly.

Following the meeting, a site visit was arranged for the highly esteemed delegation of Azerbaijan Medical University through which the delegation members could find a much clear sight into laboratory and administrative departments of the company. 
The end of the meeting, both sides agreed to do their utmost to run various forms of scientific collaboration concerned with umbilical cord blood stem cells and other by-products derived from umbilical cord including amniotic membrane and peripheral blood products.
 

When our baby was born, Smart Cells arranged a courier who delivered the cord blood to their laboratory near London. The cells were immediately cryopreserved and in a few days’ time they advised us of the outcome with all the storage details. Shortly after her birth, we realized that Asia had problems standing up and fell easily.

 In the beginning we thought this was normal, but in the following days and weeks, we realized that she was not improving. Even after a few months, she was still struggling. We had noticed that after about 10 steps, she started having difficulties. Even holding things with her hands was complicated as her movements were not fluid. As if this weren’t enough, Asia did not speak, and, generally, she wasn’t keeping up with other children. 

We started to worry so we took Asia to different practitioners, but all of them told us that besides seeing physiotherapists and speech therapists, there was nothing much we could do for her. We were told that Asia would most likely need injections of botulinum toxin in the future to help her. We could not accept that; we wanted to do more. 

At the age of two, we took Asia to an orthopedist who diagnosed Asia with a mild spastic tetraparesis due to lack of oxygen at birth. He also told us that, while there is no cure as of today for this disease, physiotherapy could help to diminish the inflammation of the muscles. He also suggested that we use the stem cells we had stored at birth. 

We therefore called the Italian office of Smart Cells to make them aware of the problem and they told us that in similar cases, other children had benefited from the infusion of their own stem cells. We did, however, need to speak with Duke University of North Carolina, in the United States, to see if it we could have the treatment there. We relied on Smart Cells in Italy to help us with Duke, because of the language barrier. After a few months, arrangements were in place for the treatment and we left for the United States. 

At Duke they were so thoughtful, caring and efficient. It was obvious that they had a huge amount of experience. They explained to us that there was a good chance that Asia would benefit from stem cell treatment but that she should continue to do physiotherapy or some type of sport. Everything went smoothly as planned. On the first day we went to the hospital for a check-up (we had already sent an MRI and Asia’s entire medical history) and on the second day the infusion of her cord blood stem cells took place. Asia had no pain or discomfort during the infusion, which lasted about 15 minutes. On the third day, we went back for further checks and they told us that everything was going well. They also explained that in a few months’ time we would see the first improvements, but after just two weeks Asia was starting to speak better, run and climb. It was obvious that she had greater strength in her arms and legs. It was all so amazing and we were so happy! 

Asia with her parents

The improvements continued and seven months later we went back to the orthopedist who is treating Asia and he said he had never seen such improvements in a child with this type of disease; the stiffness had almost completely gone out of her muscles. Even the physiotherapist who was treating Asia before the infusion noticed that her arms and legs were no longer rigid. The therapist told us that Asia no longer required the same type of physiotherapy and that she just needed to practice some sport. All this was happening under our very eyes and we were so happy, we could hardly believe it. 

During the first two weeks after the cord blood infusion, Asia experienced pain in her wrists and in her left ankle because the muscles were decontracting and this was somewhat painful. 

Duke Medical Center explained that, based on their experience, on Asia’s weight and on the number of stem cells available, it would be advisable to do two infusions a few months’ apart one from the other. They had therefore decided to use only 60% of the cells for the first infusion and asked us to come back for a second infusion later. We returned to Duke Medical Center in February 2018 for a second infusion and, like the previous time, we managed to do everything easily in three days. 

Asia is now four years old and she has just finished her second year of preschool and, even though she is the smallest in her class, she has managed to keep up with the other children. Asia is also attending a modern dance course and she participated in the end of the year show. She was so proud and happy, and so were we. 

We now hope that Asia will keep on improving and we are grateful to Smart Cells for having given us the opportunity to change our daughter’s future.