You know some technological trend is arriving when popular sports stars and celebrities embrace it. Human umbilical cord stem cell banking is hitting the mainstream. English football (soccer) players are putting the cord blood stem cells of their babies in a cord stem cell bank.
PREMIERSHIP footballers are storing stem cells from their newborn babies as a potential future treatment for their own career-threatening sports injuries.
They are freezing the cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems. Stem cells can be used to regenerate damaged organs and tissue because they are the earliest form of cells.
The article states that some of the footballers are storing their babies cord blood for the benefit of the babies. But I suspect their own high risk of injuries has made them a lot more aware of the idea of using stem cells to do repairs.
Britain, like America, has multiple umbilical cord stem cell banks. My advice if you want to use one: Make sure its financing ensures it will stick around for a decade or longer.
He is one of five professional footballers who have frozen their children’s stem cells with Liverpool-based CryoGenesis International (CGI), one of about seven commercial stem cell “banks” in Britain.
In the past five years more than 11,000 British parents have paid up to £1,500 to store their babies’ stem cells in the banks in order to grow tissue, should their children become ill.
These athletes may never benefit from the cord stem cells. Cord stem cells can be used for some childhood blood diseases and immune diseases. But the cells aren't yet usable in humans for most of the injuries they are likely to suffer.
Be prepared to spend some money. CGI's standard service of £1275 equals about $2,407.70 USD.
OPTION 1: STANDARD SERVICE - £1275
Send just £125 now for the collection kit and to cover transportation and administration costs.
The balance of £1150 becomes due after the sample has been processed and stored.
But you can save with option 2 by signing up online.
Umbilical cord stem cells have a number of advantages over adult stem cells.
Umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants are less prone to rejection than either bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells. This is probably because the cells have not yet developed the features that can be recognized and attacked by the recipient's immune system. Also, because umbilical cord blood lacks well-developed immune cells, there is less chance that the transplanted cells will attack the recipient's body, a problem called graft versus host disease.
The umbilical cord stem cells are also younger and probably more vigorous and capable of more rapid and numerous cell division. Plus, the umbilical cord stem cells can probably become more cell types than adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are even more flexible than umbilical cord stem cells.
Tampa FL (Jan. 4, 2005) – Stem cells from umbilical cord blood effectively treated heart attacks in an animal study, report cardiologist Robert J. Henning, MD, and colleagues at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital.
When injected into rats' hearts soon after a heart attack, stem cells taken from human umbilical cord blood (HUCB) greatly reduced the size of heart damage and restored pumping function to near normal. This improvement occurred without the need for drugs to prevent the rats' immune system from rejecting the human cells.
Maybe 5 or 10 years from now it'll be routine to inject umbilical cord stem cells into hearts after heart attacks.
Another study from September 2004 found that umbilical cord stem cells reduce the extent of stroke damage in an animal model by delivering neurotrophic factors that helped neurons in the damaged region to survive.
Stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood, then given intravenously along with a drug known to temporarily breach the brain's protective barrier, can dramatically reduce stroke size and damage, Medical College of Georgia and University of South Florida researchers say.
"What we found was interesting, phenomenal really," says Dr. Cesario V. Borlongan, neuroscientist and lead author of the study published in the October issue of the American Heart Association journal, Stroke.
Researchers first gave the drug, mannitol, to provide temporary passage through the blood-brain barrier then transfused human umbilical cord blood cells into a stroke animal model. When used in the first hours and days following a stroke, stroke size decreased by 40 percent and resulting disability was significantly reduced.
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The Stroke paper also explored how stem cells provide neuroprotection. The researchers speculated it was by providing the large influx of nourishing neurotrophic factors secreted by the stem cells. To test that theory, they looked at what happened when they used antibodies that negated some of the factors. "When we blocked the neurotrophic factors, it blocked the positive effect," Dr. Borlongan says.
Neurotrophic factors such as Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), nerve growth factor (NGF), and neurotrophin three (NT-3) help neurons stay alive and encourage neural stem cells to divide. Stem cells that deliver these factors could plausibly help prevent neurons from committing suicide when they are damaged from a stroke - or from a trauma experienced on a football field.
Is it worth it to bank your baby's umbilical cord stem cells? Hard to say. Umbilical cord stem cells will become useful for a much larger range of illnesses and disorders in the future. But the same will happen with other kinds of stem cells. Umbilical cord stem cells will get more government research funding than embryonic stem cells. So for that reason they have better prospects. But methods will surely be found to make adult stem cells and adult differentiated stem cells more flexible, youthful, and useful. By the time you need stem cell treatments you might have multiple choices. On the other hand, maybe your baby will need a treatment 15 years from now and umbilical cord stem might be their best choice at that time.
By Randall Parker at 2006 August 27 08:35 PM Biotech Society | TrackBack