Maria Aviles: Cord blood banking is a relatively new procedure where by stem cells are collected from the umbilical cord just after a baby is born. This is a preventative measure that can help save lives. Currently, there are about 75 diseases which cord blood can help fight especially childhood leukemia. Listen as we share more about this fascinating technology.
Gerald Maass: Stem cell is actually a primitive cell that is available in several tissues of our body and about 15 years ago was discovered that cord blood is actually a rich source of stem cells that can be easily collected, cryo-preserved and actually stored away for family’s use later on in life.
Julie.G.Allickson: Cord blood stem cells have been used in numerous number of disorders probably exceeding 70 to-date, including leukemia, lymphoma, immunodeficiency disorders, myelodysplastic syndrome and there has been approximately 6,000 transplants to-date.
Mercedes Walton: The beauty of cord blood is that it is purely noncontroversial.
Gerald Maass: Well stem cells, I have been in the news, the controversy is really on the embryonic side where the collection of the cells come from partial term babies and early pregnancy termination and that kind of thing. Cord blood collection really happens in full term pregnancies at the moment of birth and there is absolutely nothing morally or ethically calamitous about the collection of cord blood.
Julie.G.Allickson: In order to preserve the cord blood, that was just take place immediately after birth once the cord is clamped and you have a collection of approximately 100 mls of cord blood all the way up to 250 mls, that is into a bag a closed system they close that, seal that off and its picked up by a medical courier service. They pick that on bed side that’s delivered to our facility that would be delivered within 48 hours long through you see it in the facility, its succession then to the computer, then it gets prepared to go on to our laboratory.
We have a clean room so it goes through a pass-through and at that point it gets processed by the technologist. Once this is sedimented, they express off the cord blood product which includes your stem cells and then that products further volume reduced. After its volume reduced, we add a cryo-preservative to that, it’s called DMSO that’s currently what’s used for all stem cell cryo-preservation and then that is frozen in a small multi-compartment bag.
Our bag consists of a 20 ml and 5 ml segment and 3 segments for quality control testing. At the time of transplant, they would identify the product with HLA typing and they will look at the viability of the specimen prior to infusion. Once the cells are processed and the cryo-preservative is added it goes into the cryo-bag and that’s placed into a controlled rate freezer, it goes it’s frozen at a certain degrees per minute and then stored and transferred over to our long-term storage freezer tank. That bag is over-wrapped with the second wrap for security as well as stored in the vapors of liquid nitrogen so there is no chance of virus transmission in the tank.
Gerald Maass: Expecting parents usually begin researching cord blood preservation in the second trimester or so and there are varieties of ways that they can learn about banking.
Amy Lee: I am a new mom or a parent or any type of parent or grand parent could do research on the Internet. They can take a look at some of the medical sites. They can also obviously speak with their obstetrician, midwife, childbirth educator, nurses. We have a high level of repeat clients and referrals, so obviously they could speak with other family members and friends that have done some more type of services.
Gerald Maass: It’s a once in a life time opportunity. We cant stress that enough the cord blood stem cells that are available are available only at the moment of birth and they need to be collected at that point in time you cant go back and get them you know an hour later or a day later or a week later. So, just as it is very I would say a very timely procedure, it’s also very important that parents consider the company that they are going to be doing business with.
Some of the criteria that would be important would then be how long has the company been in business? How many customers thus a company currently serve? Have the cells that have been banked with the company actually ever been released and used in successful transplant procedures? Is the laboratory or the company are accredited by various accrediting agencies as well as license and that kind of thing? And then of course there is always the consideration of the cost of the service as well as the customer service that’s provided. Those are some of the items that parents should consider.
Amy Lee: The expecting parent would consider banking their newborn’s cord blood as well as placental stem cells because it’s really a valuable medical asset for the whole family.
Jonathan & Catherine Ogle: The deciding factor for me was my father had a terminal illness and that there was no cure.
James Peters: Should he has certain problems that we’ve already prepared for it and you know and not just handled it could some day help somebody else in the family.
Brett & Brenda Tobey: I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I would go well what if we have done that, so it’s a seem like a very straightforward proposition to us to say you know what God forbid we ever need, you know we always have it.
Mercedes Walton: Human beings essentially start out at the point of conception as two stem cells and those stem cells recreate themselves many times over and at a 120 days of conception the cells then are at the point where they can differentiate into organs, tissue, muscle and that’s how we all become human beings. And when you are able them to capture this miraculous power of the stem cells at the point of delivery and preserve those stem cells there is really untapped potential that would possibly allow for the regeneration of virtually every organ in the human body and that is truly mind boggling.
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