Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI) has approved the Israeli-Thai stem cell therapy company TheraVitae for special investor privileges under the BOI’s foreign investment program. Mr Narin Apichairuk, president of TheraVitae, says this will allow them to open a laboratory near Bangkok. Currently adult stem cells are extracted from patients’ blood and then sent to a laboratory in Israel for multiplication, then sent back to Bangkok for use in treatment. The treatment, called VesCell, involves injection of stem cells directly into the heart tissue to treat conditions untreatable by any other means. Two hundred patients have so far received the TheraVitae treatment in Bangkok with 75% reporting significant improvement in heart function within a few months.

With the BOI approval TheraVitae anticipates building the world’s largest stem cell laboratory near Bangkok. The result will be greater efficiency in treatments and greater capacity which will lead to lower costs that will make the treatment available to more patients. Currently TheraVitae is working with partner hospitals that include Bangkok Heart Hospital, Chaophya Hospital, Phaya Hospital group and Praram 9 Hospital as well Singapore’s Parkway Hospital group which uses VesCell throughout it’s group.

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