umbilical cord blood banking

I have read a few articles about this and it sounds like a good thing to consider doing just in case there is a need and given the huge amount of medical research and interest around stem cells these days. The applications for having done this could be life saving for your child or indeed other family members. Anyone heard about this being done in Hong Kong? How can I find out more?

Smartcells has a Hong Kong office and arrange to store in their UK cord bank their website is www.smartcells.com. I understand there is another UK based one similar to Smartcells and I have also heard that there is a new Hong Kong based cord blood bank. Unfortunately, I don't have any other names or details but your OB/Gyn should have brochures, Matilda definitely has brochures and info so contact them for more details.

Thanks Catnip - will check this out

Probably NOT a good idea. There are commercial banks that will store the umbilical blood for you but the usefulness is pretty negligible.


The theory is that you store the umbilical blood and if, God forbids, someday the child from where the umbilical blood comes from comes down with leukemia or another disease, you can perform a bone marrow transplant with that blood.


The problem with that theory is that it is generally belived that people who develop leukemia are actually destined to have it. Specifically your stem cells were in a dormant state and that some trigger set things into motion so that if you were to transplant the patient with his/her own umbilical blood, the disease will return.


Umbilical blood is useful because of its immume properties (which I won't get into), for transplantation into someone OTHER than the person whom the blood came from. Thus a national umbilical bank makes sense, but private ones don't unless of course your intention is to store the umbilical blood for poeple OTHER than your child to receive.


The exception to that rule is if you are in an ethnic group who is underrepresented in the bone marrow registries. It used to be that for caucasions it was easy but at this point it is getting easier for asians. Blacks, hispanics, and native americans would fall into that category as well as people of mixed heritage for example half asian and half caucasion.


Source? I attended a conference a few years ago presented by The National Marrow Donor Program (a US federal government program) and one of the speakers was a hematologist giving a lecture about just this topic.

Thank you Scutdog1 for your message. I agree that there are probably not too many far reaching applications right now and certainly your knowledge about the limited application for a child suffering from leukemia using it's own stem cells makes a lot of sense. However, I want to do this for each child I have and so maybe a sibling's cord stem cells would be of help or indeed if I myself as their mother needed this kind of treatment maybe I could use it too. I'd try anything to avoid leaving them motherless. In addition, how do we know what new knowledge research will bring...10- 20 years down the line or even more. Who knows of the long term benefits of having done this small thing. Maybe there will be none but maybe there could be all sorts. So, even if the usefulness is considered pretty negligible right now I think that it is worth considering. I look at it as a kind of insurance. On the other hand, I also think that most insurance is pretty useless and a waste of money but there are those occasions when it can come in very handy indeed!!!

Well that brings to another issue.


First some facts:

The way it works is that there are 6 "antigens" that determine a "match". 3 are from mom and 3 from dad. So unless you are your spouse coincidently share some antigens (not likely becasue there are SO many antigens,unless you are blood related), your child's cord blood will be a 3 of 6 match for you and your spouse. Not a good match at all. The odds of a sibling match is 1/4 for a complete match, 1/2 for 3of6 match, and 1/4 for complete mismatch. There are no in between (no 5 of 6 match). I won't get to details but thats the way it works.


Assumptions:

1. The commercial bank you are using will not be available for the general population who search for the bone marrow registries( you're not going to give away the cord blood to strangers).


2. If your child needs a bone marrow and the cord blood (and siblings) are not a match, then you would search the registries and public cord blood banks to find a match for your child. Who wouldn't under these desparate circumstances. And who would blame you that even though you wanted no part in "sharing", you would be willing and desparate and "take" from those who were willing to share even though you did not.


Now you see where I'm going. At this time, you are NOT in a desparate circumstances and you will make a choice, a public bank that will share or a private bank that will not (or a private bank that will share but there probably isn't a whole lot of them and you will have to make the same decision).


The saving grace is that you may not have to make that decision because there is so few public banks. Not because it doesn't make sense, but it is not "cost effective" to store the blood.


Just food for thought for the future and all those who are considering cord blood storage.

I would advise anybody contemplating doing this to read scutdogs comments carefully--- a very good summary of the practicalities of the situation.One other practical thing, if you wish to do this and you are a temporary resident in China, it makes no sense to store it here. It should be in your home country. This is possible but not easy, if you check the web you will find suitable cord blood banks in your home country, even home town. It is actually illegal to ship blood across borders but some of the courier companies have special containers. Generally the hospital can collect the blood, but YOU have to do the shipping.