SINGAPORE, May 21 (Xinhua) -- A team of Singaporean scientists announced on Monday that they have made a breakthrough in treating blood cancers, the Straits Times reported.

The team said it discovered a laboratory-synthesized chemical substance that can be used to increase the number of stem cells harvested from umbilical cords, which would help overcome a current challenge of cell levels being too low to help patients recover quickly.

The five researchers in the team are from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, the National University of Singapore (NUS), Duke-NUS Medical School, and the Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

William Hwang, medical director of the National Cancer Centre Singapore and one of the team members, said the need for a quick recovery was to minimize the risk of bacterial, fungi or viral infections, as well as to reduce associated health care costs.

According to the media, Singapore has more than 200 patients undergoing such stem cell treatments every year for diseases such as blood cancers.