Seville, Spain, Mar 8, 2011 / 12:04 pm
A four-year-old girl has become the first patient in Spain to recover from brain cancer after being treated with stem cells from her own umbilical cord blood.
The announcement of the girl's recovery came March 7 from the company Crio-Cord, a stem cell bank in Spain.
Alba was born healthy in 2007, but at age two she was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. Her treatment consisted of extracting the majority of the tumor from her brain. She was then given chemotherapy to reduce and eventually eliminate the remainder of the tumor.
Alba's blood system was destroyed during the final round of chemo, thus requiring a transplant of cord blood stem cells.