Cord Blood Banking Options

Cord Blood Banking Options

 

 

 

 

Video: Public or Private

 

 

Since it has been broadly accepted that cord blood is not a clinical waste, umbilical cord blood banks have been established worldwide in order to collect, process and cryopreserve donated cord blood units from volunteering families. Banked cord blood units are available to transplant centers through worldwide registries. Such registries maintain a database of the HLA type- not under the donors’ name of umbilical cord blood units cryopreserved in public banks; transplant centers have the opportunity to request a search for potential compatible (suitable) cord blood units. The first such public cord blood bank in the world was established in 1991 at the New York Blood Center. Biotechnology companies foreseeing the need of parents to cryopreserve cord blood for their own family use, have created similar establishments (termed as family banks), whereby cord blood units are processed and cryopreserved in a similar manner except that these units are only available to the family itself. This service is available to parents for a fee. Read More...

 

 

 

Public Banks

Family Banks

Units are donated for public use, all ownership rights are renounced and the unit belongs to the public bank

Unit is stored exclusively for own family use and belongs to the family.

Offers no guarantees that the child’s cord blood will be stored. (40% to 70% of received samples are discarded)

Accredited family banks have set criteria and poor quality units are rejected and parents are informed in writing.

No fee for donation as no service is offered to the donor.

There is a predefined fee for the service requested from the family/donor.

The donors are neither informed of the banking outcome nor are informed whether the sample has been issued and used.

The parents are informed in writing of the outcome. Units cannot be issued without request and written consent of the family.

The successfully banked units are available for anyone in need worldwide.

The unit is available to be managed at the family’s discretion.

Anyone, including donors, in need of a transplant will go through the normal searching procedure of a suitable source.

Unit is immediately available whenever needed.

Public Banks charge a release fee when the unit is needed.

The unit is released with no additional charges.

The family loses the advantage to use the graft for regenerative medicine future applications

Better access to the future stem cell based treatments.