Cord Blood Developments

Many cord blood banks churn out eye-catching marketing pieces and still others try to attract the expecting parent by offering low cord blood banking costs. At Cryo-Cell International, cord blood banking and cord tissue banking is personal. 

Cells derived from the fetus can persist in maternal tissues for decades after a child is born. In some instances, these cells act cooperatively to benefit maternal health and in other instances, they can lead to adverse effects on the mother: either or both protecting from or increasing susceptibility to a range of afflictions including cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. One thing is clear, they continue to make their presence known long after delivery.

I often go through a similar thought process before signing up to exhibit at expecting parents expos. At first, the deterrents rear their ugly head. But in the end, I overcome all of my own objections for one simple reason: I feel compelled to educate expecting parents on the importance of cord blood banking. 

There has been a lot of buzz around—and a number of athletes who have undergone—stem cell treatments for athletic injuries.  With umbilical cord blood and umbilical cord tissue being a readily available source of stem cells, and an alternative to bone marrow stem cells, the question arises: could cord blood stem cells stored today in cord blood banks, one day be used to treat sports related injuries?

When our son, Patrick, was two years old, he was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Therapists frequently tell me that he is the hardest worker they have had. He is very determined. As his parents, we are determined to try everything possible to help both of our boys succeed. When Patrick was three, we discovered that we were expecting another baby. My mother, who is a midwife, asked me if I was going to bank this child’s cord blood. She had attended a continuing education seminar that had talked about the benefits of cord blood banking and how they are doing a lot of research on using stem cells to treat Cerebral Palsy. We decided as a family to bank our 3^rd child’s umbilical cord blood stem cells with Cryo-Cell International in the hope that they may eventually be able to be used for Patrick.

How long can cord blood be stored is toward the top of our list of frequently asked cord blood questions. As parents want to make sure they are investing in a product with a long shelf life, it is an understandable question to have. As cord blood banking is 27 years young, data on the use of cord blood in transfusions are limited, but from what research has shown, the length of cryo-preservation has no affect on the quality and viability of cord blood collections.

In this month of March Madness, when people around the country are crazed with their office pools and cheering on their college alma maters, I met up with a very special, five-person team who’ve been playing together their whole lives. 

The team is from Ecuador and its players range in age from nine to just shy of a month old. It’s a very progressive group, allowing 3 girls (Isabella, Stella and Amanda) and 2 boys (Juan Diego and Joaquin Andres) to play together at every position. These are the Baquerizo children, and they are part of team Cryo-Cell International.

When it comes to parenting, there is no shortage of judging; in fact the judging and unsolicited opinion- giving starts when the first person recognizes you’re pregnant and it continues through delivery, child-rearing and even how to deal with your empty nest when the kids are all grown up! This reality is at every bend, we have choices, multiple choices, and sometimes the abundance of choices are confusing.

When it comes to cord blood banking, we try to make the choice clear. The decision to bank cord blood is one of the most important decisions a parent will make before their baby is born. As one of our cord blood educators just expressed to a parent, “I consider this my mission in life to make sure parents are educated fully about cord blood and cord tissue preservation.” You are collecting your baby’s master stem cells that can possibly be used to treat over 80 diseases today and probably many more in the future. Your baby’s stem cells will serve as a repair kit for your baby throughout their life as we move more into regenerative medicine.

After this past summer’s ALS ice-bucket challenge took the world by storm, many more people than ever are aware of this fatal neurodegenerative disease. According to the ALS Association, the effort resulted in raising over $100 million, an astonishing 3500% increase over the year before, for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, named for the famed NY Yankees first baseman who succumbed to ALS just shy of his 38^th birthday. The challenge raised not just money but visibility to help find treatments and a cure for ALS.

Research shows that professional football players may be at a higher risk of death from diseases that damage the cells in the brain, such as Alzheimer’s and ALS compared to the general U.S. population. A study of 3,439 players with an average age of 57 from the National Football League with at least five playing seasons from 1959-1988, found that professional football players were three times more likely to die as a result of diseases that damage brain cells compared to the general population. A player’s risk of death from Alzheimer’s disease or ALS was almost four times higher than the general population[i]

Deflate-gate notwithstanding, an estimated 100 million plus viewers will tune it to see the 49^th Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 1. However, most may not be aware of the strides being made off the field in terms of stem cell treatments for sports-related injuries.

Reports of high-profile athletes undergoing stem cell procedures have garnered lots of publicity. But the reality is the role of regenerative medicine in the treatment of sports-related injuries is steadily gaining traction. For good reason. 

There are more than 772 adult stem cell clinical trials approved by the US Food and Drug Administration that are currently being conducted and many of them involve investigations of relevance to injuries of bone, cartilage, tendons or skeletal muscle, therefore having implications for sports-related injuries.