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Regenerative therapy is the practice of delivering cells and cell products to renew diseased or damaged tissues in a specific area. It is one of the fastest growing fields of medical research. Each year, new regenerative therapies using stem cells from cord blood and cord tissue enter into clinical trials for the treatment of chronic and life-threatening diseases. If proven successful, these clinical trials will lead to approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With FDA-approval, these treatments can then be administered as a general practice.
Lifebank USA is another private bank, located in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey, that’s accredited by the AABB. What sets this bank apart from the others: it’s one of the few banks that store umbilical cord blood and placenta blood (this is done for free). Stem cells from placenta tissue can turn into skeletal tissue types such as bone, cartilage, fat tissue, and connective tissue, whereas cells from cord blood turn into different types of blood cells.
When it comes to raising kids, good advice and strong evidence can be hard to come by. The Growth Curve blog brings an accessible and metered approach to new studies and popular parenting topics. Growth Curve is a blog of Science News, which gives readers a concise overview of the most important science news from all fields and applications of science and technology.
10. Organ failure. What better way to ease the shortage of organs for transplantation than to grow new ones? That’s what some scientists think, and with stem cells, that vision may become more than a pipe dream. Last year, researchers grew a beating rat heart in the lab with the help of heart cells from newborn rats, preliminary proof of the concept.
Why should you consider donating the cord blood to a public bank? Simply because, besides bringing a new life into the world, you could be saving an individual whose best chance at life is a stem cell transplant with your baby’s donated cord blood. This can only happen if you donate and if your baby is a close enough match for a patient in need. If you chose to reserve the cord blood for your family, then siblings who have the same parents have a 25% chance of being an exact match.
Public cord blood companies are mostly nonprofit companies that are traded publicly, and doctors can utilize matching cord blood in these banks for treating their patients, even if the blood is not their own.
Currently, ViaCord has released the most cord blood units for medical transplant and has the highest cord blood transplant survival rate among companies who have disclosed complete transplant data. The one-year survival rate of patients who were treated with ViaCord cord blood units is 88%, and the long-term patient survival rate is 82%.1
An additional cost that is borne only by public banks is the “HLA typing” that is used to match donors and patients for transplants. This is an expensive test, running about $75 to $125 per unit. Family banks always defer this test until it is known whether a family member might use the cord blood for therapy.
Bielorai B, Trakhtenbrot L, Amariglio N, et al. Multilineage hematopoietic engraftment after allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation without conditioning in SCID patients. Bone Marrow Transplant.2004;34 :317– 320
Right after the cord is clamped and cut, your medical practitioner uses a needle and gets it inserted into the umbilical vein of the cord. Only that part is cut which is still attached to the placenta. High quality and proper needles are used and they do not go anywhere near your baby.
Cord tissue contains a special type of stem cell that has the potential to treat injuries and diseases affecting cartilage, muscle, and nerve cells.19 Since 2007 there have been about 150 clinical trials that have used cord tissue stem cells in human patients.
Lamaze International has created a continuing education home study based on this article. Visit the Lamaze Web site (www.lamaze.org) for detailed instructions regarding completion and submission of this home study module for Lamaze contact hours.
Some brochures advertising private cord blood banking show children with cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder, who were treated with their own stem cells. In the case of Cord Blood Registry, the company lists all stem cell transplants conducted at Duke University. In a list of individuals treated in their “stem cell therapy data” cerebral palsy is listed. However, transplants were part of an early research study and studies of efficacy are just now underway.
Regulatory agencies (eg, FDA, Federal Trade Commission, and state equivalents of these federal agencies) are encouraged to have an active role in providing oversight of the cord blood program. All cord blood–banking programs should comply with FACT or equivalent accreditation standards.





Families with a history of diseases can store cord blood in a bank. These families can access it should a person get sick with an immune system or blood disease, like leukemia or sickle-cell anemia, later in life.
Another important consideration for autologous use is that, currently, it is unknown how long umbilical cord blood will maintain its usefulness while frozen. Research indicates that cord blood stem cells can be maintained up to 15 years, but it is unknown if the cells would be preserved over the entire lifetime of a person (Ballen et al., 2001; Hess, 1997). Furthermore, financial costs are associated with maintaining the cord blood over time. Kaimal, Smith, Laros, Caughey, and Cheng (2009) studied the cost-effectiveness of private umbilical cord blood banking for autologous use and concluded that it was not cost-effective in most instances because the chances that it would be used are extremely small.
One of the first things I learned is that the couples in my childbirth class were not unique. In fact, research indicates that most pregnant women are underinformed about the issue of cord blood banking (Fox et al., 2007). While reviewing the literature on cord blood banking, I also found that the information available for nurses and childbirth educators often comes from private cord blood banks or their employees (Cord Blood Registry, 2009; Wolf, 1998, 1999), thus introducing the chance of bias.
Entz-Werle N, Suciu S, van der Werff Ten Bosch J, et al. Results of 58872 and 58921 trials in acute myeloblastic leukemia and relative value of chemotherapy vs allogeneic bone marrow transplantation in first complete remission: the EORTC Children Leukemia Group report. Leukemia.2005;19 :2072– 2081
Stay up on the latest stem cell developments with our stem cell news blog. Read about the newest trials that are underway, how current trials are faring and new ways that cord blood and tissue stem cells are being used in regenerative therapies. For doctors and researches, the Stem Cell Insider provides a more detailed look at the latest stem cell news and showcases the latest advancements in our products to help ensure stem cells preserved with us are viable and pure.
A number of private for-profit companies have been established that encourage parents to bank their children’s cord blood for their own autologous use or for directed donor allogeneic use for a family member should the need arise. Parents have been encouraged to bank their infants’ cord blood as a form of “biological insurance.” Physicians, employees, and/or consultants of such companies may have potential conflicts of interest in recruiting patients because of their own financial gain. Annual disclosure of the financial interest and potential conflicts of interest must be made to institutional review boards that are charged with the responsibility of mitigation of these disclosures and risks. Families may be vulnerable to the emotional effects of marketing for cord blood banking at the time of birth of a child and may look to their physicians for advice. No accurate estimates exist of the likelihood of children to need their own stored cord blood stem cells in the future. The range of available estimates is from 1 in 1000 to more than 1 in 200000.51 The potential for children needing their own cord blood stem cells for future autologous use is controversial presently.51 There also is no evidence of the safety or effectiveness of autologous cord blood stem cell transplantation for the treatment of malignant neoplasms.51 Indeed, there is evidence demonstrating the presence of DNA mutations in cord blood obtained from children who subsequently develop leukemia.52 Thus, an autologous cord blood transplantation might even be contraindicated in the treatment of a child who develops leukemia.
It depends on who you ask. Although commercial cord blood banks often bill their services as “biological insurance” against future diseases, the blood doesn’t often get used. One study says the chance that a child will use their cord blood over their lifetime is between 1 in 400 and 1 in 200,000.
Rubinstein P, Dobrila L, Rosenfield RE, et al. Processing and cryopreservation of placental/umbilical cord blood for unrelated bone marrow reconstitution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1995;92 :10119– 10122
4. Parkinson’s disease. Stem cells may also help those who suffer from Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that can cause tremors, stiffness, and other movement and speech problems. Studies show that embryonic stem cells can give rise to the dopamine-making neurons that Parkinson’s patients lack. When transplanted into rodents with a Parkinson’s-like disorder, those replacement brain cells improved the animals’ motor function.
Harvesting and banking cord blood is a fairly simple procedure that can be performed during vaginal or cesarian deliveries without interrupting the birth process.  The doctor or nurse will collect the cord blood after the umbilical cord has been clamped.  The collection of cord blood is not painful, intrusive or risky to the mother or baby.
Using their banked cord blood stem cells, ViaCord families participate in ongoing IND approved research including autism, cerebral palsy, & brain injury. Over 150 families have participated in ongoing research.
Because there are no scientific data at the present time to support autologous cord blood banking and given the difficulty of making an accurate estimate of the need for autologous transplantation and the ready availability of allogeneic transplantation, private storage of cord blood as “biological insurance” should be discouraged. Cord blood banks should comply with national accreditation standards developed by the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Trade Commission, and similar state agencies. At a minimum, physicians involved in procurement of cord blood should be aware of cord blood collection, processing, and storage procedures as shown in Table 2.
There are three types of umbilical cord blood banks: private, public, and direct-donation banks. The private bank is a commercial, for-profit entity that often advertises directly to expectant parents. These banks are designed for the sole use of the families who have saved the cord blood. Private banks charge an initial fee for collection and processing and, then, a yearly fee to maintain the specimen. Another fee is often charged when a sample is removed for testing or treatment (Moise, 2005).
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