Cord Blood Banking Information for Parents

The following post is from Frances Verter, Ph.D., founder and director of Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation, an informational resource site for parents seeking to learn more about cord blood banking. Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation prides itself on providing accurate and balanced information about cord blood medical therapies and cord blood storage options, as well as working to analyze new developments in medical research or public policy which could expand the use of cord blood.

I never knew about cord blood banking until my daughter, Shai, had cancer. One day at the hospital, I overheard a doctor talking to another mom about it. The family was a mixed race couple who had a child with leukemia, and the mom was pregnant again. The doctor urged them to save the baby's cord blood in case they needed it to transplant the sibling with leukemia.

Since then, I have learned that the blood in a baby's umbilical cord is one of the body's richest sources of blood-forming stem cells. If you collect the few ounces of blood that is left in the cord after the baby is born, you can send it to a lab where technicians can isolate millions of stem cells and cryogenically store them for later use.

There are two options for saving cord blood. The first is to pay a private bank to store it for your family. The second is to donate it to a public bank that helps patients seeking a matching donor for a stem cell transplant.

Many cancer patients who need a bone marrow transplant can get a cord blood transplant instead. Whereas a bone marrow transplant requires finding a donor who is a perfect match, stored cord blood is waiting in the bank and does not have to be perfectly matched. Those transplant patients who come from minority ethnic groups or have a mixed racial background are most likely to have cord blood transplants, because they cannot find a perfectly matched bone marrow donor. This is another reason why the doctor I overheard was urging a mixed race couple to think seriously about saving their baby's cord blood.

Sadly, my daughter Shai died of cancer. But afterward, when I became pregnant with her sister Shoshana, I began investigating cord blood banking. I formed a website to educate other parents, and eventually it became part of a charitable Foundation called Parent's Guide to Cord Blood (ParentsGuideCordBlood.org).

Today, cord blood stem cells are not only used for cancer patients. Researchers are finding that children with neurologic injuries often benefit from receiving their own cord blood. Hundreds of children around the world have participated in studies where they received cord blood stem cells to treat cerebral palsy, a complication that affects 1 in 50 premature babies. In July of this year, a new clinical trial started testing cord blood as therapy for autism. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 1 in 68 children are on the spectrum of autism-related disorders.

Expectant parents should spare a few moments to learn about cord blood banking and decide if it's the right choice for their family. Parents who want to donate their child's cord blood must register well in advance of birth. Even if the hospital where you plan to deliver does not collect cord blood donations, there is a mail-in donation program that most parents can access. Given the recent advances in cord blood research, I encourage parents to learn more about cord blood banking so they can make the best decision about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bank their newborn's cord blood.

Frances Verter founded the Parent's Guide to Cord Blood in 1998 in memory of her daughter Shai. She started her career as a research scientist, earning a B.S. in physics from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Princeton University. Her life changed course unexpectedly when her daughter Shai was diagnosed with cancer. The photo to the left shows Frances with Shai in Sept. 1994. As Shai's mother, Frances learned to be a patient advocate in order to take better care of her child. She found that her training as a scientist enabled her to review research on Shai's diagnosis and seek out treatment from the best doctors and the best hospitals. After Shai passed away, Frances went on to have more children and decided to bank their cord blood privately. The effort of researching the cord blood banks available at that time led to the formation of the Parent's Guide to Cord Blood website in 1998. For many years the website was a community service that Frances did on the side of her day job at NASA. But gradually, that side began swallowing the rest of her life. She decided in 2006 to try to make a career out the project, and in 2007 incorporated as a non-profit foundation. Since then, she has thrown herself even deeper into following everything about cord blood, from education for expectant parents to the use of cord blood in clinical trials. She regularly attends conferences, gives talks, and publishes articles. Frances supports both public donation and family banking of cord blood, depending on the circumstances of the family.