Expectant parents are often overwhelmed with information about banking their baby’s umbilical cord blood, but privately banking cord blood can cost thousands of dollars. Now there’s a way to publicly store cord blood for free.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have come up with a kit-based umbilical cord blood donation program.
Cord blood contains special stem cells that can be used as a substitute for bone marrow for those with otherwise incurable blood cancers and other rare genetic diseases.
The big difference between the private and public banks is that public cord blood donations are not held for the donor family, and can be used for any patient found to be a match.
However, doctors say unrelated donors are often better cord blood transplant matches anyway.
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