Save, Store, Donate: Reasons Parents Should Consider Cord Blood Banking

Save, Store, Donate: Reasons Parents Should Consider Cord Blood Banking

When you go to the bank, you deposit money, right? Well, some “banks,” which are actually advanced scientific labs, will “bank” blood – umbilical cord blood. Women deposit their umbilical cord blood immediately after birth, and it’s available for use for any family member. Wow! Does that sound strange? To some, hiring a company to look over their stem cell-filled cord blood for the rest of their life is perfectly normal. More than that, it could be life-saving.

How It’s Done
When your baby is born, cord blood is collected from the umbilical cord. Only three to five ounces is collected from each cord. The amount is small enough to treat an ill child, but not enough to treat an adult. Still, multiple units of matched cord blood may be able to treat an adult.

Why It’s Done
Cord blood is collected so that, later on in life, blood diseases can be treated using the stem cells in the blood. Babies who need stem cell transplants can receive their own stem cells in a very usable format. For example, if a patient needs stem cells for cancer therapy or some other illness, rather than collecting it from bone marrow, the cord blood can be used.

The disadvantage with using bone marrow, or regular blood transfusions, is that it’s harder to find a match exactly when a patient needs it. On the other hand, having banked cord blood makes finding a donor easy – the cord blood is a perfect match and can be used on-demand.

Patients using cord blood also recover more quickly when they receive stem cell transplants. There are also some therapies on the horizon that use patient stem cells to help accelerate healing processes in a variety of conditions.

Planning Ahead
According to companies like StemCyte™, who do cord blood banking, you need to notify your bank of choice at least 4 to 6 weeks before your due date. This is so that preparations can be made for your cord blood. If you don’t notify them on time, you won’t be able to bank the blood.

You can choose to either bank the blood with a private company or a public one.

Private Vs Public Banks
Private companies charge a fee for their services, but they preserve the cord blood for you, specifically. If you, or anyone in your family, ever needs the stem cells, you are guaranteed them in the future.

Public companies do not guarantee your blood. It may be used for you, other people, or for research. This is an options you may or may not want to choose, depending on what you think you will need.

Public companies are free, which is why some people choose to donate to them. Of course, if you’re going through the trouble of donating, you might well want to pay for the benefit of having access to the blood.

You Can’t Cure Any Disease
While stem cells are capable of becoming any cell in the body, and therefore are instrumental in the treatment of a variety of diseases, they cannot cure everything, and there are therapies that are not yet approved by the FDA.

For example, you can use the cord blood if you have a family history of disease that harms the blood and immune system later on in life. For example, families with a strong history of leukemia and some cancers like sickle-cell anemia, use banked blood as a treatment.

But, not all moms can donate their cord blood. So, if you are younger than 18, have already been treated for cancer, of have received chemotherapy, you’ve had malaria in the last three years, or have been treated for a blood disease like hepatitis or HIV/AIDS, then you cannot use your blood cord. Finally, if you’re delivering the baby prematurely, you cannot collect the cord blood and donate it – you can collect it for private use, however.

Where To Bank Your Cord Blood
There are many places all over the world that will do this for you. Here is a list by country. There are also places where you can donate your cord blood to others for use, and where there is no guarantee that it will be available to you for future use.

To donate the cord blood, you must sign up between the 28th and 34th week of pregnancy. This is essential, and if you do not do it during this time, you can be turned down. If you are donating to a private bank, you will talk with your doctor as soon as you can about the procedure, and the blood is collected when you give birth.

Dr. Wise Young is one of the world’s most outstanding neuroscientists and a foremost leader in spinal cord injury research. He enjoys sharing his research and ideas online through blogging.

Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits Unused

Vast Majority of Life-Saving Cord Blood Sits Unused
High costs keep patients from using stem cells harvested from umbilical cords
December 5, 2014 |By Lydia Chain and Scienceline
studying ways to treat HIV, cerebral palsy and other diseases using umbilical cord blood


Scientists are studying ways to treat HIV, cerebral palsy and other diseases using umbilical cord blood, although little of the collected blood will actually be used.
Credit: Banc de Sang via flickr
You’d think doctors and patients would be clamoring for cells so versatile they could help reboot a body suffering from everything from leukemia to diabetes. But a new report shows that an important source of these stem cells—discarded umbilical cords—is rarely used because of high costs and the risk of failure.

Stem cells drawn from newborns’ umbilical cord blood are sometimes used to treat medical conditions, especially bone and blood cancers like multiple myeloma or lymphoma by replacing dysfunctional blood-producing cells in bone marrow. Generally the diseased cells are destroyed with chemotherapy and irradiation. Then new stem cells are transplanted into the patient to restore function. Cord blood stem cells are an alternative to bone marrow transplants and peripheral blood transplants, in which stem cells are gathered from the blood stream. Cord blood tends to integrate better with the body and it is easier to find a suitable donor than the alternatives.

Yet less than 3 percent of cord blood collected in the U.S. is ever used whereas the rest sits uselessly in blood banks, according to a recent report in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Immunologist Enal Razvi is author of the report and managing director of Select Biosciences, a biotechnology consulting agency. Razvi found that public cord blood banks, which store donated frozen units for transplants as needed, have only a 1 to 3 percent turnover annually. Most of their inventory sits unused year after year. For example, at Community Blood Services in New Jersey, patients have only used 278 of its 13,000 cords since it opened in 1996, according to business development director Misty Marchioni. Usage is even lower at private cord blood banks, which charge clients thousands of dollars to store a cord in the event a family member one day needs it.

Unlike bone marrow, the main alternative stem cell source, cells transplanted from cord blood carry little risk of graft-versus-host disease, a deadly condition in which the body rejects a transplant. Scientists believe this is because a baby’s immune system is closer to a blank slate, so their stem cells can integrate with the patient’s body more easily. But cord blood transplants also take longer to start working, requiring longer hospital stays and upping the bill. Due to storage and testing costs, the cords themselves also get pricy. “The cost of the cord is prohibitively high,” Razvi explains. Each unit of cord blood costs between $35,000 and $40,000 and most adults require two units for a successful transplant. Insurance companies will generally pay a set amount for a stem cell transplant regardless of where the cells come from. The price tag on a cord blood transplant can run up to $300,000, which may not be fully covered.

Cord blood stem cell transplants also have a higher failure rate than other transplant methods. If the transplant fails, it leaves patients with a compromised immune system in addition to their original disease and medical bills. Because the preparation for transplant includes wiping out the patient’s original bone marrow, the entire body has to be repopulated with stem cells able to replace it. There are not many stem cells in each cord. Compared with bone marrow or peripheral blood there is a greater chance that there will not be enough stem cells that actually implant and begin producing blood and bone marrow. “It’s like spreading a small amount of seeds in a big garden,” says Mitchell Horwitz, who teaches cell therapy at Duke University Medical Center. “Sometimes it just doesn’t take.”

Martin Smithmyer, chief executive of the private bank Americord, claims that more clients will eventually use their cords, especially as more applications are found for cord blood stem cells. But some scientists disagree. Steven Joffe, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, says that many treatments cannot be done with a patient’s own stem cells because genetic diseases would already be present in the cord blood and that bone marrow might be a better option for relatives. “The likelihood they are ever going to use that product is vanishingly small,” he says.

Despite the low usage, advocates say cord blood programs have been crucial in improving transplant options for racial minorities, because it can be hard to find a bone marrow match for some groups. Cord blood does not need to match the patient as perfectly as bone marrow. “This has transformed the treatment of minority patients,” says Andromachi Scaradavou, medical director of the National Cord Blood Program, a public bank based in New York City. “In the past we didn’t have good donors to offer them.” Community Blood Services’s Marchioni also maintains that cord blood is a good emergency option, because finding a compatible bone marrow or peripheral blood donor can take months or years. “If you need a transplant quickly,” she says, “it’s easy to get cord blood off of a shelf.”

Still, experts are working on more efficient ways of ensuring widespread availability of cord blood without having so much of it sit forever unused. Researchers are also continuing to look for ways to improve transplant success and to increase the number of stem cells obtained from each cord, potentially bringing down costs and making cord blood transplants feasible for more patients. “If the cost could be lowered,” Scaradavou says, “it would help a lot of patients get the treatment they need.”

Valuable Cord Blood Sits Unused

Valuable Cord Blood Sits Unused
High costs are keeping patients from using stem cells harvested from umbilical cords.

WIKIMEDIA, MAGNUS MANSKE
You’d think doctors and patients would be clamoring for cells so versatile they could help reboot a body suffering from everything from leukemia to diabetes. But a new report shows that an important source of these stem cells—discarded umbilical cords—is rarely utilized because of high costs and the risk of failure.

Stem cells drawn from the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies are sometimes used to treat medical conditions like lymphoma and sickle-cell anemia by replacing dysfunctional blood-producing cells in bone marrow. Yet less than 3 percent of cord blood collected in the United States is ever used, while the rest sit uselessly in blood banks, according to a September Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News report.

“The cost of the cord is prohibitively high,” explained immunologist Enal Razvi, author of the report and director of Select Biosciences, a biotechnology consulting agency. Each unit of cord blood costs between $35,000 and $40,000, and most adults require two units for a successful transplant.

Unlike bone marrow, the main alternative stem cell source, cells transplanted from cord blood carry little risk of graft-versus-host disease, a deadly condition in which the body rejects a transplant. Scientists believe this is because a baby’s immune system is closer to a blank slate, so their stem cells can integrate with the patient’s body more easily. But cord blood transplants also take longer to start working, requiring longer hospital stays and upping the bill. Insurance companies will generally pay a set amount for a stem cell transplant regardless of where the cells come from. The price tag on a cord blood transplant can run up to $300,000, which may not be fully covered.

There is also a risk that a transplant could fail entirely, leaving patients with a compromised immune system in addition to their original disease and medical bills.

“It’s like spreading a small amount of seeds in a big garden,” said Mitchell Horwitz, who teaches cell therapy at Duke University Medical Center. “Sometimes it just doesn’t take.”

These complications help explain the low usage of cord blood in the United States. Razvi found that public cord blood banks, which store donated frozen units for transplants as needed, have only a 1 percent to 3 percent turnover annually. Most of their inventory sits unused year after year. For example, at Community Blood Services in New Jersey, patients have only used 278 of its 13,000 cords since it opened in 1996, according to business development director Misty Marchioni.

PUBLIC CORD BLOOD BANK

PUBLIC CORD BLOOD BANK

Héma-Québec collects, processes, analyzes and stores umbilical cord blood. There are currently more than 8,000 units of cord blood in Héma-Québec’s Public Cord Blood Bank ready to be used. In addition to meeting local and national needs, it contributes to international efforts to find stem cells for patients awaiting a transplant.

The organizational structure of Héma-Québec’s Public Cord Blood Bank includes:

a stem cell laboratory responsible for the qualification, processing and cryopreservation of cord blood units;
a team dedicated to recruiting and screening mothers.

Héma-Québec’s cord blood collection program is active in the following partner hospitals:
St. Mary’s Hospital Center
CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center
Royal Victoria Hospital
CHU de Québec (mother-child centre)
Hôpital de la Cité-de-la-Santé de Laval
Centre hospitalier de LaSalle
Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montréal
Lakeshore General Hospital.

Study uses cord blood stem cells in hearing loss treatment

Study uses cord blood stem cells in hearing loss treatment

When children fall and scrape their knee, their body begins an amazing repair process. Blood coagulates to form a protective cover and skin cells begin to regenerate. Add a kiss and a bandage and the knee is usually completely healed within a week or two. But what happens if that child is born with a more severe problem – such as a heart defect or hearing loss? As amazing as the human body can be, sometimes its natural healing process needs a little help to get started.

That's the impetus behind a study using umbilical cord blood to treat hearing loss in children. Florida Hospital for Children and Cord Blood Registry (CBR) are launching a FDA-regulated, Phase 1 safety study of the use of cord blood stem cells to treat children with sensorineural hearing loss.

cord blood graphResearchers are currently in the enrollment phase of the study. Ten children between the ages of 6 weeks and 6 years old will be treated using their own stored umbilical cord blood. Patients will receive one intravenous infusion of their own umbilical cord blood stem cells and return for follow-up at one month, six months and one year post-treatment.

Children with genetic deafness are ineligible for study participation. More information on study enrollment and criteria can be found at http://www.cordblood.com/stem-cell-research/cord-blood-research/hearing-loss

According to the Center for Hearing and Communication, approximately 3 million children in the United States have a hearing loss; 1.3 million of them are under the age of three. Children with sensorineural hearing loss experience problems or deformities with the cochlea (sensory) or the hearing nerve (neural) due to illness, birth defects, medication, noise or head trauma.

Although hearing aids and cochlear implants are effective means of treating sensorineural hearing loss in both children and adults, these instruments do not repair damaged hearing. If successful, cord blood stem cell treatment could repair the damage, leading to improved speech and language skills, social interaction, and cognitive learning abilities for children with acquired sensorineural hearing loss.
Cord Blood Registry is a cord banking company headquartered in San Bruno, California. Currently, the company participates in FDA-regulated clinical trials for autism, cerebral palsy, pediatric stroke and traumatic brain injury. This study marks the first for hearing loss treatment.

Researchers learned the benefits of using cord blood in 1988 when the first sibling-donor cord blood transplant was performed for a five-year-old child with Fanconi anemia. In 2002, they began exploring stem cells' ability to help the body heal itself. By 2005, clinical trials were in place to investigate newborn stem cell therapies for damaged tissue. Today, more than one million people have benefited from stem cell treatment for more than 80 different diseases.

Cord blood stem cells have documented success in treating leukemia, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hodgkins disease and Non-Hodgkins lymphoma to name a few. Researchers are hopeful cord blood will eventually be effective in the treatment of AIDS, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury and stroke.

What makes stem cells so desirable? Stem cells are considered the body's "master cells" because they have the ability to create the different types of cells that make up human organs, blood, tissue and immune system. Stem cells, typically found in bone marrow and fat tissue, have the ability to divide and develop into any of the three main types of cells found in the blood: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.

Although cord blood stem cells have the same capacity as stem cells found in other parts of the body, there is less of a risk for transmitting infectious disease or being rejected by the host. They are also much easier and safer to collect.

Cord blood stem cells are different from the controversial embryonic stem cells, which require the destruction of a human embryo to obtain. Cord blood is collected with no risk to the mother or child and can be frozen and stored for many years. More than 200 hospitals actively collect cord blood from babies (with mother's consent).

Parents must make the decision to collect and store their baby's newborn stem cells immediately after birth. After the umbilical cord has been clamped and cut, the remaining blood in the umbilical cord is drawn into a collection bag. Costs include $2,000 for the procedure and approximately $125/year to store the baby's core blood. Parents may also choose to donate their cord blood to public storage banks. The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages public cord-blood donations; however, opposes private banking in most cases.

UMBILICAL CORD BLOOD RESEARCH A VALUE TOOL

UMBILICAL CORD BLOOD RESEARCH A VALUE TOOL

“I participated in a campaign on behalf of Dad Central for the Cord Blood Registry. I received promotional item to thank me for my participation.”

When I had my first child, I learned that there’s nothing more exciting and nerve racking than waiting for my baby to arrive.  Recently, I learned that men can help to control things such and safety and the security of my family.  One of those things is considering whether to bank or donate your newborn’s core blood stem cells.

Stem cells that are in a newborn’s umbilical cord have unique characteristics, other than are found in other parts of the body.  Cord blood is rich in hematopoietic steam cells.  HSC’s  that are acquired from cord blood offer advantages compared to adult stem cells that come from bone marrow, and cord blood can be collected without posing risk to the mother or the newborn.

Because this information isn’t really presented in a fair and balanced manner, more than 90% of newborn stem cells are discarded as medical waste.  There is only one chance to collect and store these stem cells, and that is immediately after birth.  Expectant parents can either choose to store their child’s umbilical cord blood, or they can donate it to a public bank.  As of now, only a select number of hospitals are able to collect the cord blood for storage in public cord blood banks.

A lot of parents don’t know that cord blood  can have the potential for treatments and medical use that was not previously imagined.  About 1/3 of parent’s comprehend that stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood are being used in regenerative and transplant medicine more often.  Over the past 25 years cord blood stem cells have been used worldwide to treat nearly 80 serious diseases and disorders in adults and children.

The Family Cord Blood Banking Act has been introduced to Congress.  This will ensure that cord blood banking services will be a qualified medical expense.  For those people that believe in the continued study of stem cell research and want to provide their family with potential treatment options, cost should not be a barrier to preserve these unique, powerful cells.

BedJuddbabygirl Rebecca Judd paid $3000 to store her daughters umbilical cord blood. This is why. Rebecca and Chris Judd have decided to store their newborn daughter Billie Kate’s umbilical cord blood.

BedJuddbabygirl Rebecca Judd paid $3000 to store her daughters umbilical cord blood. This is why.
Rebecca and Chris Judd have decided to store their newborn daughter Billie Kate’s umbilical cord blood.

Australian model Rebecca Judd and her husband Australian Football League player Chris Judd have decided to store their newborn daughter Billie Kate’s umbilical cord blood.

The reason? They want to be prepared should there ever come a time when stem cells could help their family.

The 31-year-old mother reportedly made the decision to store the blood, as tissue from the umbilical cord contains haematopoietic stem cells (which can be used to treat immune system disorders and generate red blood cells) and mesenchymal stromal cells (which can be grown into bone and cartilage).

Chris Judd has suffered from knee problems in the past – so if either of his children suffer from the same issues, the solution may already be frozen and waiting for them.

After the birth of their first child, Oscar, born in 2011, the Judds chose to store only the cord blood – but this time Rebecca decided they should store the extra tissue.

She told the Herald Sun:

“It made a lot of sense to store both the cord tissue and blood with our new daughter … Of course, you obviously hope to never be in a position to have to use it. But ensuring we stored this important cord tissue and cord blood — when you have only one opportunity at birth — made sense.”

So what motivates a parent to look that far into the future, and think about storing umbilical cord blood and tissue – at the moment of giving birth?

rebecca judd cord blood 3 Rebecca Judd paid $3000 to store her daughters umbilical cord blood. This is why.
Two per cent of Aussie families made the decision to privately store cord blood last year.
While some might find the motivation a bit morbid – in the sense that you are storing the blood for the sole purpose of dealing with the possibility of leukaemia, anaemia and autoimmune diseases in the future – it’s actually quite a sensible idea.

The process is painless, and doesn’t hurt mother or child. After giving birth, an obstetrician will collect blood from the umbilical cord – which will then be transferred to cord blood bank for freezing.

Cell Care, the company which is storing the Judds’ cord blood tissue, has revealed to the Sun Herald that about two per cent of Aussie families made the decision to privately store cord blood last year.

Private cord blood banks mean that the parents have to pay a fee, and the cord is stored for exclusive use by the child (or related family members). There are also public donation banks, where parents can chooser to donate the cord blood which is then available to be used by anyone in Australia who is a suitable genetic match – much like a standard blood bank – which has the potential to save other lives.