What are Stem Cells?
Stem cells create all other tissues, organs, and systems in the body. Pluripotent stem cells are the type of cells found in human embryos and literally are the fundamental cells that form all other cells in the body. Hematopoetic stem cells are found in bone marrow, peripheral blood, and umbilical cord blood. The hematopoetic stem cells' primary function is to build the blood and immune systems, but they also can form other types of cells in the body. The stem cells' ability to differentiate is not only why they have already been effectively used in the treatment of more than 70 malignant and non-malignant diseases, including sickle cell, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, other forms of cancer, life threatening anemias, and auto-immune diseases. It is also why many scientists hope to use cord blood stem cells to help treat much more prevalent conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

Why Store Stem Cells?
Parents are choosing to bank their newborns' cord blood because the stem cells are unique to the newborn, and genetically related to their other children and family members. Cord blood banking enables parents to preserve these stem cells for their families' potential use, not only to help treat diseases where cord blood stem cells have already proven beneficial, but also in the hopes that they will one day help treat a multitude of other disorders.

Stem cell transplants are either allogenic, using stem cells from another person to treat the patient, or autologous, using the patient's own stem cells.

In the past, allogeneic transplants have been done with hematopoetic stem cells found in bone marrow. Family members offer the best likelihood of finding a matching bone marrow donor, but only about one third of patients requiring a hematopoietic stem cell transplant have a compatible family bone marrow donor. Many then turn to the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry, where some still are unable to find a suitable donor. About 9,000 patients a year die in the United States waiting for a bone marrow match, approximately 3,000 of whom are children.

When a genetic match is available, the process of bone marrow stem cell extraction is costly and painful, and often needs to be done multiple times. One of the great advantages of cord blood stem cells is that they are more primitive than those found in bone marrow and therefore carry a lower incidence of graft versus host disease (GVHD), making it possible to perform transplants with less than perfect matches of bone marrow type and potentially decreasing the morbidity and mortality overall of the recipients. 1

1. Outcome of Cord-Blood Transplants from Related and Unrelated Donors, NEJM, August 7, 1997 Volume 337, Number 6; Clinical Research News for Arizona Physicians, December 1995, www.ahsc.arizona.edu