Cord blood banks
Hemafund / For parents / The value of umbilical cord blood / Cord blood banks
The history of individual banking of cord blood starts in 1992 in the USA, when professor David Harriss de bene esse froze his son’s cord blood, having started the epoch in medicine of long-term cord blood cryostorage. Since that time, there have been established more than 200 banks of cord blood, which function successfully at the moment, and David Harriss is a head of one of the biggest of these banks.
Such banking is especially developed in the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Singapore.
A possibility to store stem cells as an original health reserve was obtained due to discovery by scientists of a technology of long-term biomaterial storage in a liquid nitrogen at ultra-low temperatures. Keeping the stem cells of cord blood endlessly without lost of their biological properties under conditions of a temperature regime of -196°Сwas proven being possible. This method became a basis of cryostorage in so-called ‘Dewars’ which were special vessels, where ultra-low temperature was provided by delivery of liquid nitrogen.
International organization Netcord established with a support of the European Parliament is engaged in work coordination of European cord blood banks. In addition, cord blood storage and research are supported by a charity organization ‘Red Cross’ as well as the major religious organizations, namely the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and the Judaic religious community. The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchate published a statement on its official website in yet 2005 supporting research of stem cells of adults (to which the stem cells of cord blood belong) and acknowledging great prospects of their usage in treatment of different diseases. And Vatican gives millions of Euro to various companies for studying treatment methods based on the stem cells of adults.
There are different private banks which are engaged in personalized storage of stem cells and so called ‘public’ banks.
The public banks of cord blood are state donor banks, the cord blood from which can be applied to any patient, who requires transplantation of stem cells and has immunological compatibility with one of samples from the bank. The government not only finances the work of such banks, but promotes charity donations among pregnant women in a variety of ways, i.e. transmission of the cord blood of their children, collected during childbirth, into the common use. The state banks of the cord blood have been created in such countries as the USA, Canada, Germany, Spain, Croatia, Japan, China, Korea.
In private banks of cord blood, which are prevalent in the world, parents have an opportunity of personalized storage of their children’s stem cells, like an original medical insurance. The storage of such a personal deposit is a paid service. In Ukraine since 2005, there is a possibility of personal storage of stem cells of one’s child cord blood in the bank of cord blood ‘Hemafund’.
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