1. Is there any cost to my patients whatsoever if they elect to donate their cord blood?
2. Is CORD:USE Public Cord Blood Bank collecting the cord blood for research?
3. Once collected, where is the cord blood sent?
4. Is the blood available to the patient and her family?
5. How many diseases have cord blood stem cells been used to treat and how many transplants have been performed to date?
6. I had heard that cord blood can only be used in children. Is this still true?
7. How long can cryogenically preserved cells remain viable?
1. Is there any cost to my patients whatsoever if they elect to donate their cord blood?
None whatsoever. There is never any charge or expense to your patient for donating her baby’s cord blood to the CORD:USE Public Cord Blood Bank.
2. Is CORD:USE Public Cord Blood Bank collecting the cord blood for research?
CORD:USE Public Cord Blood Bank is focused on increasing the inventory of high quality, ethnically diverse cord blood stem cell units in order to help patients who are in urgent need of locating a match for a blood stem cell transplant. So each cord blood is collected with the hope that it will meet the criteria for transplantation. Cord blood units which do not meet the criteria can be used for ethical research.
3. Once collected, where is the cord blood sent?
CORD:USE Public Cord Blood Bank sends the cord blood to Duke University Medical Center’s Stem Cell Laboratory. The laboratory facility and staff are under the watchful and caring eye of the cord blood banking and cord blood transplantation pioneer, Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg.
4. Is the blood available to the patient and her family?
If a cord blood unit meets the criteria to be placed in the National Marrow Donor Program Registry (a global registry), it is available to the patient or her family the same way it’s available to anyone in need. Once it has been chosen for transplant, it will no longer be available. If a family would like to guarantee that their cord blood be available for them, they should pay a family cord blood bank to privately store their cord blood.
5. How many diseases have cord blood stem cells been used to treat and how many transplants have been performed to date?
There are now over 70 diseases for which cord blood has been used in their treatment. There is also a great deal of research with promising results suggesting that this number will continue to increase. To date, there have been over 20,000 cord blood stem cell transplants performed, helping to save thousands of patients who would have otherwise not had a chance of survival.
6. I had heard that cord blood can only be used in children. Is this still true?
Originally, it was thought that the number of stem cells in a cord blood unit limited cord blood as a therapy to children. However, with increasing inventories with large cord blood units and the discovery that two cord blood units can be transplanted together, the National Marrow Donor Program now reports that approximately 50% of the cord blood units they facilitated for transplants in the last year were in adults.
7. How long can cryogenically preserved cells remain viable?
Cord blood samples which have been cryogenically preserved for 21 years have proven to still have viable cells when thawed.