Pioneering work on Shropshire border to help sick animals

Scientists at the Veterinary Tissue Bank at Bryn Kinalt, near Chirk, have started carrying out the work in recent months alongside the tissue growth research which they have been doing since the centre opened about four years ago.

Three animals have been helped out in recent months due to stem cell research on live animals, which is being carried out to help pets suffering with conditions such as arthritis.

Vets Peter Myint and John Innes, who set up the tissue bank, have appealed for pet owners to agree to allow their animals to be donors when they die to help other creatures still alive.

They have claimed that a donation of tissue cells from one animal could help up to 50 others.

Under the scheme pet owners are given a tissue donor card for their pet cats or dogs – much like the organ donor cards that millions of people choose to carry with themselves.

Inside the lab there is not an animal in sight. Samples of tissue are stored in containers and work is carried out in safe and sterile conditions.

Mr Myint said: "This is pretty pioneering stuff. We have now helped our third animal and things are going very well."

He said that the vet takes a small sample of fat from the affected animal and sends it to the laboratory.

"We isolate the stem cells and then expand them until there are about five to 10 million cells," he said.

"They are then sent back to the vet who will use them in an operation."

Mr Myint said that the procedure sees stem cells injected directly into the affected site.

Mr Myint, who worked as a vet for 20 years before going into research, said that the centre had been carrying out work into tissue growth ever since it had opened and said tissue cells from just one animal could help up to 50 living animals.

Mr Myint said: "We could see that this was something that would be needed more and more.

"We work with vets providing the tissue and stem cells to help dogs and cats who suffer from injuries and have arthritis."

Mr Myint, who lives in Chirk, said the vast majority of the work is to help those animals that have broken bones and need bone grafts – but an increased number of donors would mean that more operations could be carried out.

"It is a difficult subject to broach with pet owners and, just as there are never enough human organs available to help those in need, we run out of tissue samples," said Mr Myint.

"But if people sign up we also inform their vet and so when their animal passes away it is not so difficult.

"We work under strict ethical guidelines. Samples can only be taken under an owner's written consent and there is no money involved.

"We don't charge and we don't buy tissue."

Anyone interested in the tissue bank can get in touch by visiting the website www.vtbank.org

Fact file:

• The Veterinary Tissue Bank in Chirk is the only one of its kind in Europe. The only other one in the world is in the USA.

• The first recipient of a feline bone graft from stem cells grown in Chirk was a two-year-old cat called Merlin from Liverpool

• Animals have to have to fulfill certain medical criteria before they can be accepted, including having a full vaccination history

• A bone graft operation is not cheap. A complex operation on a dog can cost up to £5,000.

• At the moment only specialist vets and animal hospitals can carry out the procedure