Report urges better use of umbilical blood for stem cells

[420inTN]

2 hours, 27 minutes ago

By Julie Sevrens Lyons, Mercury News

A treatment for more than 45 disorders, including sickle-cell anemia and some types of leukemia, can be found in an unlikely place: hospital trash containers.

A newborn baby's umbilical cord, routinely discarded after birth, contains life-giving stem cells that could help thousands of sick Americans each year. But the current system for collecting, storing and allocating donated cord blood is fragmented and inefficient, according to a sweeping Institute of Medicine report released Thursday.

Many of the public organizations that collect cord blood have had to stop from time to time because they couldn't afford to gather and store it, experts said.

There is no lack of new parents willing to donate their babies' cords, said Dr. Jeffrey Chell, CEO of the non-profit National Marrow Donor Program, which oversees a registry of donated cord blood. ``The challenge we have right now is to have the funds available to collect the cord blood units needed.''

more, full story here

[Igel]

1. Yeah, it turns out stem cells are common as dirt.

Federal funds for umbilical cord stem cells and every other non-embryonic type is available, before the usual "if * funded this", yada-yada.