What is cord blood banking ?
Cord blood banking is vital because increasingly cord blood is being used to treat a variety of malignant and severe genetic diseases of the bone marrow or immune system, the Sunday Times understands.
Usually these diseases are treated by allogeneic haemopoietic stem cell ( HSC) transplantation, with the HSCs being collected from bone marrow or peripheral blood, said NBTS Director Dr. Vijith Gunasekera. But such collection of HSCs would only be possible if there is a matching donor and finding a donor is time- consuming. Even when such donors are found they are sometimes not available at the time the transplantation is needed. As such in the last decade, cord blood has increasingly been used as an alternative source.
The diseases which can be treated by HSC transplantation are Congenital Immune Deficiencies, Aplastic Anaemia, both acute and chronic Leukaemia, Hodgkin’s disease, Myelodysplasia and also Thalassaemia, it is learnt.
Cord blood as a source of HSC has many advantages, according to Dr. Gunasekera.
The Sunday Times learns that cord blood is the blood that remains in the blood vessels of the discarded placenta and the portion of the umbilical cord that remains attached to it, after a baby is born. While cord blood contains the usual red and white blood cells, platelets and plasma, it is also rich in HSCs.
Cord blood being abundantly and readily available and generally considered a waste product, it can be harvested with no risk to either the donor mother or infant, pointed out Dr. Gunasekera.
The other advantages would be the ability to store fully tested cord blood units in the frozen state for immediate use, reducing disease and death among patients associated with long procurement times for bone marrow; the absence of donor attrition; low risk of viral transmission; and a higher degree of mismatch appearing to be acceptable with a comparatively reduced risk of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease, possibly due to the naivety of the cells, it is learnt.
Meanwhile, ethnic minority groups that are markedly under-represented in Bone Marrow Donor Registries could also be targeted for cord blood collection to build up stocks.
These facilities to come into being in about two years will not only save lives but also vast amounts of foreign exchange.