Video: About Public Cord Blood Stem Cell Options

About Public Cord Blood Stem Cell Options

Heidi Murkoff: Hey mamas and mamas-to-be, usually I’m the answer mom, but when it came time to talk about cord blood banking, I had questions too — and so did you. So when Emma and I had the chance to visit CRB Labs in Tucson, Arizona, we brought your questions and ours with us. Happily, Kristen Swingle was on hand to answer them all. Take a look!

H: A lot of moms that I’ve spoken to hear that cord blood banking is very expensive, and they worry that they can’t fit it into their budget — and that there’s a yearly maintenance fee and all that. What are your other options? What about public banking? Is that open to everyone?

Kristen Swingle: It’s open to individuals that live in a specific area associated with the designated public banks. So public banks have a smaller network of collecting hospitals and collecting physicians, that will collect those samples specifically for the public donation purpose.

H: Hopefully in the future there will be more options for public banking all over the country?

K: That is definitely the hope — that someday there will be the option for moms to choose to publicly donate their child’s cord blood sample, regardless of where that mom is.

H: One of the moms actually asked whether if you donate to a public bank, do you have any kind of special relationship with that sample? In other words, if you need it one day, do they reserve for you?

K: Unfortunately, no. Part of the public donation process is to have that anonymity between who donated that sample, and ultimately who receives that sample.

H: Are there any cases in which cord blood can’t be banked, because for instance a mom didn’t pass a screening test?

K: If the mom or child were not to pass a certain screening test, then that may preclude the donation of that sample. You have to remember that public banks are looking for samples that are going to go into a larger registry, and so they have very specific criteria. With family bank samples, we also have very specific criteria, however, that sample is going to be used to treat either that child or a family member of that child. And so there isn’t anything that necessarily precludes us from being able to process and store that sample long-term.

K: We will test moms blood for infectious disease markers and that sort of thing, so based on those test results, that may impact the long-term ability to store that sample or ultimately the use of that sample. But we always communicate those test results to the mom and work through those types of situations.

H: I hope that answered some of your questions about cord blood banking — I know Emma and I definitely learned a lot.

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