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More people are looking to store Umbilical Cord blood in hopes of having a magic formula for a cure if a tragic disease were to strike a family.

A few company’s have been collecting and storing cord blood for the past 6 years.  Here is an interesting article on the subject. In my view, its worth the cost. how could you not store something which could save your life down the road or help to cure a disease such as Autism..?

Should you wish that your baby is credited with the title of a Good Samaritan as soon as he is born? If so, one way is to donate blood from your baby’s umbilical cord. The umbilical cord is usually considered waste after a baby is born (once separated from the mother). The umbilical cord stump peels off the body of the newborn baby within 12-15 days of the baby being born.

But, the umbilical cord can be put to good use by taking blood from the umbilical cord before discarding it. This blood can be extremely helpful to leukemia patients and patients of other life-critical diseases. Umbilical cord blood is different from embryo blood in the sense that this blood is taken from the umbilical cord and the placenta after the birth of the baby.

Why is cord blood critical to various medical functions?

* Cord blood is extremely useful for individuals/patients who need a transplant done quickly. Cord blood is easily accessible as they are stored in units and ready-for-use.

* Many surgeries require patients to find a matched bone marrow donor. Bone marrow blood, especially one matching the donor and the acceptor’s RH level are extremely difficult to find. Cord blood can be used as an effective replacement in these cases.

* Many individuals/communities have a very rare group of blood RH. Patients from such communities find it increasingly difficult to find blood matching their blood indicators. Cord blood can be used to donate blood to these patients as they do not require to be matched with the acceptor’s blood indicator.

Umbilical cord blood – Use in transplant surgeries

Cord blood considered suited for transplantation purposes are typed on tissues, frozen and stored. A liquid Nitrogen refrigerator is used in sub-zero temperatures to store the cord blood for transplantation.

What factors are considered for patients needing transplant surgeries?

* Type of transplant required – Use of cord blood in transplant surgeries is extremely dependant on the type of transplantation required to be done. Cord blood cells are extremely useful in treating certain life-threatening diseases, not all of them.

* Adequate blood forming cells – Cord blood units having inadequate blood forming cells are not considered for transplant surgeries. A cord blood unit having umbilical cord blood is considered effective for transplantation purposes only if it has adequate blood forming cells.

Close to 6000 patients suffering from leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases are constantly in need of cord blood to meet their blood acceptance needs. Cord blood donated by a newborn baby is used for bone marrow surgeries or cord transplants.

A simple act of donating umbilical cord blood can prove to be a life-saver for many patients. Irrespective of the race of the baby, the mother can decide to donate the umbilical cord blood as early as the 34th week into pregnancy.

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My wife and I are blessed with 2 children and are expecting our third in October. We have been contemplating storing the umbilical cord for future use for someone in the family, should one of us become sick or if a break through occurs and we can help those with Autism Spectrum Disorder with this invaluable resource. We have decided it is worth the expense – $4,000 for a 20 year storage. Has anyone out there done this and actually used the blood to harvest stem cells? if so, please write to us.

This story hit the web recently, it helps to validate our decision for sure.

Scientists Grow Stem Cells For Parkinson’s, Down Syndrome, Other Disorders

By Stephanie Nano, Associated Press

AP – Harvard scientists say they have created stems cells for 10 genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases develop in a lab dish.
This early step, using a new technique, could help speed up efforts to find treatments for some of the most confounding ailments, the scientists said.
The new work was reported online Thursday in the journal Cell, and the researchers said they plan to make the cell lines readily available to other scientists.
Dr. George Daley and his colleagues at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute used ordinary skin cells and bone marrow from people with a variety of diseases, including Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Down syndrome to produce the stem cells.
The new cells will allow researchers to “watch the disease progress in a dish, that is, to watch what goes right or wrong,” Doug Melton, co-director of the institute, said during a teleconference.
“I think we’ll see in years ahead that this opens the door to a new way to treating degenerative diseases,” he said.
The new technique reprograms cells, giving them the chameleon-like qualities of embryonic stem cells, which can morph into all kinds of tissue, such as heart, nerve and brain. As with embryonic stem cells, the hope is to speed medical research.
Research teams in Wisconsin and Japan were the first to report last November that they had reprogrammed skin cells, and that the cells had behaved like stem cells in a series of lab tests. Just last week, another Harvard team of scientists said they reprogrammed skin cells from two elderly patients with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and grew them into nerve cells.
Melton said the new disease-specific cell lines “represent a collection of degenerative diseases for which there are no good treatments and, more importantly, no good animal models for the most part in studying them.”
A new laboratory has been created to serve as a repository for the cells, and to distribute them to other scientists researching the diseases, Melton said.
“The hope is that this will accelerate research and it will create a climate of openness,” said Daley.
He expects stem cell lines to be developed for many more diseases, noting, “this is just the first wave of diseases.” Other diseases for which they created stem cells are Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes; two types of muscular dystrophy, Gaucher disease and a rare genetic disorder known as the “bubble boy disease.”
Daley stressed that the reprogrammed cells won’t eliminate the need or value of studying embryonic stem cells.
“At least for the foreseeable future, and I would argue forever, they are going to be extremely valuable tools,” he said.
The reprogramming work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and private contributions to the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

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