What is cord blood banking?

Modern medicine means that we are living to greater ages than ever before. In fact, your unborn baby is likely to make it well past their one hundredth birthday.

With this longevity, however, comes a unique set of health complications. Just because we can live that long, it doesn’t follow that the human body is capable of doing so easily.

This is where cord blood banking comes along.

Stem cells are life’s building blocks, and they are currently being used in well over 5,000 clinical trials, and are believed to hold the ability to provide therapies for the likes of diabetes, Parkinson’s and even Alzheimer’s; diseases that currently have no known cure.

As well as this, stem cells have been used in more than one million transplants the world over. Stem cells are a proving to be vital to both current and future therapies.

The blood in the umbilical cord and placenta are by far and away the richest source of stem cells – billions of them in fact. These stem cells can be used in transplants to help your body regenerate and repair itself, but they can only be harvested within the first few hours of the day they are born.

That means it is vitally important to bank these stem cells before they expire. Stem Protect will arrange the collection and storage of your child’s stem cells and will deal with it all quietly while you get to know your new baby.

The cells are harvested from the umbilical cord through the drawing of a small amount of blood.

Usually around 75ml is taken and immediately couriered to a processing lab.

The blood will be screened for numerous virus types to ensure its suitability, before beginning the process of being frozen.

Firstly we add a cryo-preservant to the sample to ensure that none of the cells die during the freezing process, then the cells are slowly cooled to -90ºC. At this point, the frozen cells are then placed in a frozen liquid nitrogen tank which reduces the temperature to -196ºC.

With the current technology at our disposal, we have no reason to believe that the stored cord blood will ever become unviable.Some of the earliest samples were frozen in 1993, and have since been used with the same level of efficacy that we would expect from fresh cells withdrawn that day.

Cord blood banking is an investment in your child’s future. With current research into huge numbers of illnesses and conditions focusing on stem cell therapies, you can see why banking your child’s stem cells is a sound preparation for their later years.

Speak to our experts today to discuss stem cell and cord blood banking.