The preservation of umbilical cord blood is necessary in order to use it for future treatments. It can be done either privately or with any public cord blood bank.
The cord blood preservation with private banks is costing a bit, whereas if public preservation is done, it becomes impersonalized, i.e. difficult to find out whose cord blood it is and could be used by anyone who requires it.
The blood needs to be collected in minimum sample size of 75ML however the average sample size being 100ML. This sample is collected painlessly at the time of birth from the umbilical cord when the cord is cut off from the body of the infant. After the sample is collected, it is send to preservation laboratory and then viability processing is carried out.
First of all, either all the red blood cells are completely separated out from the cord blood or in relative process it can even be left intact. The samples collected also need to be checked for viral or bacterial or fungal or any other microbial or infectious disease. After all it’s suitable testing is done to determine type of HLA is determined. After, cryopreservant is added to the sample in order to prevent the stem cells from dieing at the time of freezing. This sample is then cooled slowly to the temperature of -90 degree centigrade and then added to liquid nitrogen tank, at the temperature of about -200 degree centigrade.
There are several private and public stem cell blood banks in both developed and developing countries. The public blood bank needs to be intimated in about thirty fourth week of the pregnancy for the collection purposes.
The safety of the sample of such stem cells collected needs to be properly maintained, including the physical safety from natural disasters from enemy attacks, power failures, biological infections and all other sort of probable hazards.
If preserved properly, these samples could be stored easily for years and years. The publicly stored cord blood samples could be used in case of requirement by anyone in need subject to matching of the stem cells required. Also that even the partially or half matched cord blood samples can be transplanted into the person which gives it advantage over the bone marrow transplant which is the next best alternative, and also the bone marrow transplant is very painful and cumbersome than the stem cell transplant.
The family umbilical cord blood banking preservation is quite costly; however the public umbilical cord blood banking preservation is maintained and sponsored by government agencies.
The whole process and chain of this type of blood preservation is comes under the purview of control of “National Marrow Donor Program” (NMDP). The private cord blood banks are operated privately for the sake of the use of donated cord blood stem cells exclusively by the donor himself or by his family or by his other relatives.
