Charles having just given blood at Lifeforce Immune Systems Bank in Newport, South Wales
We really should celebrate Britain's global leadership in technological innovation, particularly in biotechnology.
Today I visited a small but fast growing business in South Wales. Lifeforce is an Immune Systems Bank that has developed a process that could help you to use your own immune system to help fight a range of diseases, including some cancers, that you contract later in life by storing your own white blood cells under highly secure conditions. If fact I was so impressed with the potential for Lifeforce that I agreed to become a small investor in the business helping to provide the capital that it needs to deliver their business plan. And I am delighted to be backing one of my oldest friends, Christopher Darby, who is the company's finance director.
Lifeforce collects blood cells from healthy adults, separates out the white blood cells, freezes them in liquid nitrogen and stores them until they might be needed in the future. The whole process is completely sterile using a high degree of automation and best practice. The purpose of freezing the Immune System when it is healthy is to enable you to be treated with those stored cells in future should you fall ill. The potential illnesses it could treat are chronic viral infections, including HIV, as well as a variety of cancers. Until now, these cells have only been collected after the patient has fallen ill and after the virus has damaged the white blood cells making them only partially effective. The Lifeforce difference is to collect them before you fall ill, giving you the best chance in the future.
This seems a totally logical procedure, and is relatively inexpensive. So, I was glad to give a pint of blood which passed through Lifeforce's centrifugal system separating sufficient white blood cells for storage under such safe conditions.
My girlfriend Andrea, who is a senior Anaesthetic Registrar at the Royal Coventry and North Warwickshire Hospital, tells me that the results of my blood test were completely normal. They show a reading of 16 for haemoglobin which means that I am not anaemic. The score for haematocrit of 0.44 shows that I am possibly a touch dehydrated, but nothing significant, and the white cell countreading of 4.7 means I have no infection grumbling away. Platelets were normal too.
It is heartening to know that if I do contract a serious disease later in life my own blood cells have been stored by Lifeforce and can be replicated and used to help my immune system heal itself. It is a simple concept, but clever stuff! It might also be a good business. www.ImmuneSystemBank.org
