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Panel: Government should oversee collection of umbilical cord blood
Associated Press
Published April 15, 2005
WASHINGTON - Blood saved from newborns' umbilical cords could help treat about 11,700 Americans a year with leukemia and other devastating diseases, yet most is routinely thrown away, a panel of influential scientists said Thursday in calling for a tripling of the nation's supply.
Cord blood is rich in stem cells, the building blocks that produce blood - the same stem cells that make up the bone-marrow transplants that help many people survive certain cancers and other diseases. When frozen from cord blood shortly after a baby's birth, stem cells are ready to be thawed and transplanted at a moment's notice, much easier than traditional bone-marrow donation.
Now the government is preparing to open a national cord blood bank in hopes of providing an adequate supply to find a match for every patient who needs this kind of stem-cell transplant.
Because stem cells from cord blood are more easily transplanted into unrelated people than is bone marrow, specialists have long pushed for a coordinated national stockpile.
About 100,000 donations from pregnant women in the next few years would be required to set up the bank, on top of the roughly 50,000 cord-blood donations already in stock at different public banks around the country, the Institute of Medicine said Thursday, in a report requested by Congress on how a better national banking system should be established.
About 4-million U.S. babies are born every year, and most of the umbilical cord blood is simply thrown away.
[Last modified April 15, 2005, 00:50:05]
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