Types of Cord Blood Banks

In private banks, parents pay the bank to preserve the cord blood for family use.  The family owns the cord blood and can decide how it is used.  In this website, the phrases "private bank" and "family bank" mean the same thing.

When you donate to a public bank, you sign away all ownership of the cord blood.  However, the bank needs to maintain a confidential link to your identity.  The bank may need to contact you in the future if they find a disease marker in the cord blood which you should know about.  And you should contact the bank if the donor develops cancer or another disease which may cause the blood to be abnormal.

Type of bank	Private Bank	Transplant Public Bank	Research Public Bank
Cost to Parent	$1,000 - $2,000	Free	Free
Blood Owner	Parents	Bank	Bank
Bank Income	Parents	medical insurance and blood sales	blood sales & patent royalites
Blood Usage	Parental discretion	transplants or grant-funded resarch	research

There is more variety among "public" banks than among "private" banks:   In a Transplant Public Bank, the bank is committed to the goal of archiving cord blood collections for medical patients requiring transplants. The bank may be a non-profit institution or it may be a for-profit corporation. The crucial factor is not the business model of the bank, but its commitment to try to archive the cord blood that it collects.   Parents should be aware that in a Transplant Bank, the criteria for saving collections are so strict that approximately half of all donations are thrown out.  All donations under 60 cc volume will be discarded, and at some banks the volume threshold is even higher. 

It is very difficult to financially break even when archiving cord blood.  As explained on the web page about costs, the bank spends about $1,000 to process each cord blood collection, and this is balanced by charging about $28,000 for each collection released for transplant (median price at NMDP banks as of 2008). But it takes a few years to reach equilibrium between the cost of collecting units versus the income from releasing units.  Thus, even a Transplant Public Bank will sell any collections that do not meet its storage criteria. These research sales help to boost their income.

Another business model is cord blood banks which collect donations purely for medical research.  These banks do not discard units below a strict volume cut-off, because their goal is to sell units, not to archive them.  Medical research cannot procede without such donations, but parents should make sure they are comfortable with the credentials of the organization to which they are donating.

Parents should read the Informed Consent carefully before donating cord blood. This web site has a page explaining Donor Consent requirements and options.