News

Oct 2012   The Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Program (UCBCP) is a California state program run by a small team of dedicated people at the University of California Davis Health System located in Sacramento. The UCBCP was created by a law passed in late 2010 that recognized the urgent need for Californians to donate cord blood for public use, to increase the number of units that are available for transplant and especially those that are racially and ethnically diverse. Many Californians and others worldwide are not able to find a match for a bone marrow donor or cord blood unit, because they are of mixed heritage. The only way to fix this problem is to make sure that the National Cord Blood Inventory has units collected from donors that also have unique genetics representing a diverse family background.

Oct 2012   Our clinical trial, listed as ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01019733, was carried out at a University Hospital in Monterrey, Mexico, where we treated children with cerebral palsy that were not able to bank their cord blood. Instead we use stem cells derived from their bone marrow.

Oct 2012   Being able to keep the important stem cells in cord blood and birth tissues alive and stored for a long period of time is the key to the utility of "banking" them for later use. This is achieved by freezing, or cryopreservation, of the cells; but how to effectively accomplish this is a bit more complicated than as if storing leftovers in the kitchen freezer.