Advanced BioBanking with LifeBankUSA!

I blogged about cord blood banking with LifeBankUSA after Blair was born and am happy to share more today about their Advanced Biobanking service.

Advanced Biobanking includes Placental Blood Banking, Complete Placenta Banking, Cord Vessel Banking, and Cord Platelet Rich Plasma Banking. Because “placental blood contains various types of progenitor stem cells that play a role in stimulating the body’s own repair mechanisms to heal previously damaged tissues or organs,” scientists are exploring the use of progenitor stem cells in many diseases including cerebral palsy, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and spinal cord injury. Banking the entire placenta offers potential for new treatments in immune disorders, wound healing, and organ transplant and growth. Banking the arteries in the umbilical cord has potential for new surgical applications in treating heart disease. “Both adult and umbilical cord platelet rich-plasma contain cytokines and growth factors that may be useful for the repair of eye injuries, wounds, tissue tears and fractures.” Adult platelet rich-plasma has been used in treating athletes with orthopedic injuries and umbilical cord-platelet rich plasma is potentially more potent and enriched source of growth factors than adult platelet-rich plasma. On top of cord blood banking, Advanced Biobanking adds the potential to treat so many more diseases, illnesses, and injuries.
LifebankUSA is the only cord blood bank that also offers placenta blood banking and tissue banking. As I hear more and more stories about young children being diagnosed with life-threatening diseases, it gives me hope that cord blood banking as well as Advanced Biobanking can help these children and others in the future.

I absolutely loved working with LifeBank to donate Blair's cord blood last year. LifeBankUSA is the only company that offers cord blood, placenta blood, and tissue banking, and they are also the first to release placenta-derived stem cells for a successful transplant. They were absolutely wonderful to work with and they will collect cells from anywhere in the US. Another reason to bank with LifeBankUSA -- They include tissue banking (tissue from the placenta) for free. Placental tissue contains mesenchymal (MSCs) and MSC-like cells. While stem cells found in cord blood and placenta blood have been used to successfully treat patients, there are currently no approved uses for stem cells derived from the umbilical cord or placenta tissue. Possible therapeutic applications are in early research stages and LifeBankUSA's parent company is actively involved in their development. LifeBankUSA will store the placenta tissue for you as part of their banking package using their cryogenic tanks for long-term preservation. In the event your baby's tissue cells are ever needed for future therapies, the tissue may then be processed and cultured using available technology at the time. Banking with LifeBankUSA will definitely give you peace of mind, knowing that this stem cell-rich blood can be used to treat certain diseases in the future.
I really hope if you are pregnant you give cord blood banking some serious thought! And definitely keep in mind all of these added benefits that are unique to LifeBankUSA. I know when you are pregnant, you have about 1,000 things on your mind every minute, but going through LifeBankUSA for your baby's cord blood and placental banking will help give you greater peace of mind, I promise :)