News

Jan 2025   Cartistem® from Medipost is a regenerative medicine product manufactured from cord blood that is used to treat severe knee arthritis. It has regulatory approval in South Korea since 2012, and Medipost is seeking approvals in Japan and North America. Cartistem® has been used to treat over 30,000 patients and its sales have grown by 36% per year.

Jan 2025   Effective 12 Feb. 2025, CMS will only reimburse 17 allograft products for the treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers, and 5 allograft products are covered for Venous Leg Ulcers. The covered products all have evidence of efficacy from randomized controlled clinical trials. Physicians seeking reimbursement for skin substitute products will have to meet strict requirements.

Dec 2024   We provide a table summarizing placenta regulations in each of the 50 US states plus the District of Columbia. As of Dec. 2024, the states in which you can definitely or probably take home your placenta are: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Texas.

Dec 2024   FACT has published Version 8.2 of the NetCord-FACT International Standards for Cord Blood Collection, Banking, and Release for Administration.

Nov 2024   The UAE has a half dozen new cord blood laboratories, four of them from companies that have been in this market for years and two from new entities. The explosion of laboratories in this small country is partly an effort to continue doing business under new regulations, and partly an investment in a national market that many see as having great potential.

Nov 2024   Swiss Stem Cells Biotech has introduced a banking model that is a private/public hybrid with crossover. Parents that opt into the hybrid bank have the option to release their cord blood if it matches an anonymous patient.

Nov 2024   Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood has been offering parents questionnaires to ask family banks since 1998. Back in 2017 we moved these questions into the FAQ section of our website. Now in 2024 we are restoring the format where all the questions are in one list.

Oct 2024   China is performing more cord blood therapies per year than the rest of the world combined. Haplo-Cord transplants are popular in China and are called "double insurance" transplants. China is compared to India, another Asian country with thousands of patients in need of stem cell transplants for Thalassemia. India has the potential to be a world leader in cord blood transplants if this therapy option was more accessible to patients in need.

Oct 2024   Today's cord blood transplants have roughly the same engraftment time and graft failure rate as haplo transplants.

Sep 2024   Registrations of clinical trials performing advanced cell therapy with perinatal cells have returned to pre-pandemic levels. When perinatal blood is used in trials to treat hematology/oncology disorders, it is usually as a source material to derive immunotherapy cells. Trials of perinatal MSC continue to be spread among many indications for use.