Cord Blood Cells

What is cord blood?
Cord blood, which is also called "placental blood," is the blood that remains in the umbilical cord and placenta following birth and after the cord is cut. Cord blood is routinely discarded with the placenta and umbilical cord.

Your baby's umbilical cord blood is a valuable source of stem cells, which are genetically unique to your baby and family. The ability of cord blood stem cells to differentiate, or change into other types of cells in the body is a new discovery that holds significant promise for improving the treatment of some of the most common diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's. Currently, stem cells are primarily used in transplant medicine to regenerate a patient's blood and immune system after they have been treated with chemotherapy and/or radiation to destroy cancer cells. At the same time the chemotherapy and radiation destroys the cancer cells in a patient, they also destroy stem cells. Therefore, an infusion of stem cells or a stem cell transplant is performed after the chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment. The stem cells then migrate to the patient's bone marrow where they multiply and regenerate all of the cells to create a new blood and immune system for the patient. The promise of using stem cells for medical treatments has been the focus of research projects that are showing encouraging results. * Cord blood stem cells have been "triggered" to differentiate into neural cells, which could lead to treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. * They have also proven their ability to turn into blood vessel cells, which could some day benefit treatments for heart disease, allowing patients to essentially "grow their own bypass."

Stem cells are the body's "master" cells because they create all other tissues, organs, and systems in the body. The stem cells found in cord blood are the building blocks of your blood and immune system and most readily replicate into: Red Blood Cells - which carry oxygen to all the cells in the body, White Blood Cells - which fight infection, and Platelets - which aid in clotting in the event of injury. There are three sources where stem cells are commonly found, they are: * Bone Marrow, * Peripheral Blood (the blood that circulates through your body), and * Umbilical Cord Blood.

Umbilical cord blood stem cells are the "youngest," safely available stem cells and they are the product of another miracle - a live birth. Freezing these cells essentially stops the clock and prevents aging and damage that may occur to the cells later in life. Another source of stem cells, embryonic stem cells, has been at the heart of heated debate. Currently, embryonic stem cells are not being used to treat humans. A third category of stem cells is adult stem cells, such as those found in bone marrow. Adult stem cells serve very specialized roles in children and adults and are not as proliferative as those found in cord blood.

To date, umbilical cord blood has been used in more than 8,000 transplants for children and adults. In many cases, the cord blood was used by the baby's sibling. Other transplants have occurred for the newborn himself, the newborn's mother, father, and the newborn's cousin. In the past two years alone, research has demonstrated that cord blood stem cells can differentiate into other types of cells in the body. The regenerative qualities of stem cells have been brought to the forefront in the field of cellular repair. Stem cells have been labeled an important biological resource and researchers are conducting more and more studies to unlock the potential of umbilical cord blood stem cells in future applications for diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart and liver disease, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and stroke.

Latest cord blood blog articles: