Cord Tissue Stem Cells FAQ’s

Umbilical cord tissue and the tissue of the placenta are rich sources of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC). Currently, MSC is the most popular form of cells that are being used in clinical trials and are appearing in published regenerative medicine research.

MSC shows great promise for treating a wide variety of auto-immune disorders and treating injuries to muscle or bone (heart disease, sports injuries).

The MSC from birth sources, such as cord tissue and the placenta, grow faster than MSC from adult donors and have never been exposed to disease.

All the reasons that you banked for the first child are still valid for additional children. Storing every child’s cord blood could provide the biggest guard to every child:

• Every child's stem cell is unique. Although cord blood could treat more than 80 diseases, some inherited diseases cannot be treated by own cord blood. In this respect, siblings’ (with consanguinity) cord blood is the most possible source to treat the disease.

• Research shows that 1 in 217 people by age 70 may need stem cell transplant.

• Under the circumstances of twins, the need to bank the cord blood (or umbilical cord) is varied. Twins can be categorized into two main types: Identical twins (monozygotic) when a single fertilized egg splits into two genetically identical halves and nonidentical twins (dizygotic) - where two eggs are fertilized at the same time. For identical twins, their cord blood can be combined for storage as the twins are genetically identical. But for non-identical twins, as their genes are different, it is suggested to store their cord blood separately

The more siblings with banked cord blood, the more chance that they cover each other for possible transplants or other therapies for which sibling stem cells are an option.

To date, there have been over a thousand human clinical trials with MSC, and none have employed donor-patient matching. This is a contrast cord blood transplant, which requires a partial HLA match between the donor and the patient. The difference exists because MCS expresses very low levels of the molecules (called major histocompatibility complex) that require compatibility between the donor and the patient. Hence it is safe to receive cell therapy with MSC from an unrelated donor.

In fact, due to their immune-modulating abilities, MSC therapy is used to suppress auto-immune diseases and to prevent graft versus host disease (GvHD) after a transplant.

The term "cord tissue" refers to the rest of the umbilical cord, other than the blood. A normal umbilical cord contains two arteries, one vein, an outer skin, and it is filled with a gelatinous material called Wharton's Jelly.

Like cord blood, the umbilical cord tissue is a rich source of stem cells. However, they are a different population of stem cells from the ones in cord blood. While most of the stem cells in cord blood are blood-forming or hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), most of the stem cells in cord tissue are mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSC). The MSC are not distributed uniformly in the cord but are mostly clustered around the walls of the blood vessels. The fact that cord blood and cord tissue hold different types of primitive cells explains why it is valuable to consider storing both.

Like cord blood banking for the family, cord tissue banking is a form of biological insurance, where parents bank their baby’s stem cells for future therapies. The two main benefits of banking both cord blood and cord tissues are:

1. To have more stem cells from the same child and.
2. To have different types of cells.

There are a growing number of clinical trials with umbilical cord tissue. Some of the conditions targeted by these therapies are diabetes, heart disease, stroke, graft versus host disease (GvHD), degenerative arthritis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), anal fistula in Crohn's Disease and others.

The tissue of the umbilical cord is rich in these primitive cells that have the ability to become bone and cartilage cells (osteocytes and chondrocytes respectively).

Perhaps more importantly, MSC has been shown to suppress inflammation and modulate the immune system response. Clinical trials with MSC from cord tissue are available for many different disorders, but the most common are auto-immune diseases and neurologic conditions.

To ensure that the cord blood/tissue stem cells can be used for therapy at any moment. This dismisses the necessity to search for donors, which is costly, timeconsuming, risky, and does not guarantee a positive outcome. Early treatment minimizes the progress of the disease and boosts chances for complete recovery.