Reasons to bank cord blood

Why bank cord blood?

Birth is a one-time opportunity to help society by donating the blood in your child's umbilical cord to a public bank. Cord blood contains stem cells that can save lives. Patients requiring a stem cell transplant can receive stem cells from one of three sources: bone marrow, circulating blood, or cord blood. The first two exist in all healthy adults, but cord blood can only be harvested and stored at birth. It is much easier to match transplant patients with cord blood than with the two sources of adult donors. This is important for patients who come from minority or mixed race backgrounds. Hence, diverse cord blood donations to public banks can save many lives right now.

Birth is also a one-time opportunity to help your own family by saving your child's cord blood in a private bank. Transplant patients recover better when they receive stem cells from a related donor, instead of an unrelated donor. If a first degree relative of your baby needs a stem cell transplant, the baby's cord blood stem cells could be a suitable match. Plus, there are now emerging therapies in which children use their own cord blood stem cells to help the body repair itself. In the future, children whose parents saved their cord blood will have better access to those treatments.

There is virtually no reason not to save your child's cord blood. Some people are concerned that the clamping of the umbilical cord should be delayed so that the baby can receive the blood in the cord. Studies have shown that babies whose cord clamping was delayed by two minutes had slightly less anemia up to six months after birth. However, there is no benefit to waiting more than two minutes to clamp the cord and collect the cord blood.

Why cord blood is a preferred source of stem cells for therapy

• Your child gets half of his or her genetic material from each parent.
  Only a few genes, those that determine HLA type, are important to match a patient with a donor.
• The genes determining HLA type tend to be inherited as a group.
  As a result, two children of the same parents have a 25% chance of being a perfect match to each other.
• Genetic variations are also grouped by race.
  As a result, a patient has a better chance of finding a donor among his or her own racial group.

Access to banked cord blood opens up medical opportunities for patients who need stem cell therapy, because cord blood does not have to be matched as precisely as stem cells from adult donors. A bone marrow transplant requires a patient-donor match of 6 out of 6 or 100%, whereas studies find that cord blood is just as successful with a patient-donor match of 4 out of 6 or 67%. Since 70% of patients in the US who need a stem cell transplant do not have a donor in their family, the national Be The Match RegistryŽ run by NMDP puts an emphasis on collecting cord blood donations, and an emphasis on recruiting donors from racial minorities.
(Graphics below courtesy of NMDP)

Why doesn't everybody bank cord blood?

In the US, cord blood is saved from less than 5% of births. The main obstacle to more cord blood banking is the cost. When a public bank accepts a cord blood donation to be saved for possible use by patients, it costs the bank about two thousand US dollars to process the cord blood for storage.

In any given country, only a limited number of institutions have government funding or other financial resources that enable them to bank cord blood donations for the benefit of society. Hence, the number of hospitals and collection programs that can accept cord blood donations are limited. If you live in the United States and wish to donate your child's cord blood, first find out if you are eligible to donate, then check our map for a donation location or a mail-in donation program.

Parents can also save their child's cord blood by contracting with a private bank to store it for the family. In this case the parents cover the cost of processing the stem cells and maintaining them in storage. We have an international list to help you to find a family bank by country. Once you have the list for your country, you can compare all banks by one feature, do a split screen comparison of two banks, or call up a summary of price options (for example: USA price options).

There are charitable programs that provide free or discounted banking to help families who have a medical need for cord blood storage.

In some countries it is possible to store cord blood in a family bank and simultaneously list it on a public registry in case a patient needs it. Unfortunately, in the US, the current health regulations do not allow family storage to be converted for public use. At present, the cord blood choices that families face are: donation, family storage, or discard. If you do have the choice to either donate or bank for your family, there is no single correct decision. There is only the decision which is right for your medical history and your values -- do not let anyone pressure you.