Cord Blood
Storing your baby's lifesaving cord blood stem cells provides you with peace of mind and a powerful medical resource used to treat many severe illnesses for your child and loved ones. Discover today why we’re the most trusted and most reliable cord blood bank in the industry.
What is cord blood?
Cord blood, which is also called "placental blood," is the blood that remains in the umbilical cord and placenta following birth and after the cord is cut. Cord blood is routinely discarded with the placenta and umbilical cord.
Your baby's umbilical cord blood is a valuable source of stem cells, which are genetically unique to your baby and family.
What are stem cells?
Stem cells are the body's "master" cells because they create all other tissues, organs, and systems in the body.
The stem cells found in cord blood are the building blocks of your blood and immune system and most readily reproduce into:
Red Blood Cells - which carry oxygen to all the cells in the body
White Blood Cells - which fight infection
Platelets - which aid in clotting in the event of injury
There are three sources where stem cells are commonly found, they are:
Bone Marrow
Peripheral Blood (the blood that circulates through your body)
Umbilical Cord Blood
The ability of cord blood stem cells to differentiate, or change into other types of cells in the body is a new discovery that holds significant promise for improving the treatment of some of the most common diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's.
If you are interested, or someone you know is interested, in donating cord blood, look for a Cord Blood Bank or collecting hospital within or close to your community. There are only a small number of cord blood banks in the United States, so donation to a local bank is not possible in many areas.
If there is not an NMDP Cord Blood Bank in your community, refer to the Non-NMDP Cord Blood Bank list on this Web site or contact any major university hospital or medical center in your state to see if they accept cord blood donations.
Cord blood donation is currently not possible in many communities. Many communities do not have the technical and financial resources needed to establish and operate a public cord blood bank. Although cord blood banks are developing throughout the United States, the annual number of births far exceeds the expected need for cord blood storage.
How are stem cells used?
Currently, stem cells are primarily used in transplant medicine to regenerate a patient's blood and immune system after they have been treated with chemotherapy and/or radiation to destroy cancer cells.
At the same time the chemotherapy and radiation destroys the cancer cells in a patient, they also destroy stem cells. Therefore, an infusion of stem cells or a stem cell transplant is performed after the chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment. The stem cells then migrate to the patient's bone marrow where they multiply and regenerate all of the cells to create a new blood and immune system for the patient.
The promise of using stem cells for medical treatments has been the focus of research projects that are showing encouraging results.
- Cord blood stem cells have been "triggered" to differentiate into neural cells, which could lead to treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
- They have also proven their ability to turn into blood vessel cells, which could some day benefit treatments for heart disease, allowing patients to essentially "grow their own bypass."
Why are doctors turning to cord blood instead of bone marrow?
Easier to match -- higher survival
Bone marrow is difficult to match between the donor and recipient because a "perfect match" is usually required. Cord blood immune cells, however, are less mature than in bone marrow and can be successfully used even when there is only a half-match. This means there is more opportunity for transplants between family members when cord blood is stored. Some studies have shown that overall survival rates for related transplants are more than double that of transplants from unrelated donors.
Immediate availability
Banking cord blood ensures that these stem cells can be immediately available if they are needed for treatment. Early treatment of many illnesses can minimize disease progression. According to researchers at Duke University, cord blood transplants could provide possible survival that is unlikely with the more time consuming process of unrelated marrow donation.
Less GVHD
Overall, patients who receive cord blood transplants from a relative experience significantly less Graft vs. Host Disease (GVHD), a transplant rejection that is the leading cause of death in stem cell transplant patients. According to one study, the three-year cumulative incidence of chronic GVHD was 6% for matched siblings who received cord blood transplants versus 15% for matched siblings who received bone marrow transplants.
Bravenet.com