Huntsville blood bank to preserve umbilical cord tissues

The only umbilical cord blood bank in Alabama will soon carry the tissues as well.

Southern Cord, headquartered at Huntsville's HudsonAlpha, will soon offer the new service, which will allow them to do research for different medical applications that cord blood doesn't have. This is because the tissues contain a different kind of stem cell.

Were storing these cells so that at a future date, they can be used by the baby, but they also could be used by the siblings and even the parents, Southern Cord owner and UAH director of information services Chakri Deverapalli says. Currently, there are already 80-plus diseases cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where cord blood is used as a treatment. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, as the field of emerging medicine continues to expand.

Medical research is uncovering treatment roles for cord blood stem cells in diseases like autism, cardiac disorders and Alzheimers disease.

The research shows that one in 70 kids in this generation are going to need stem cell treatment, Deverapalli says. Medicine has changed and so treatment itself is advancing.

The stems cells being saved are not ethically controversial, according to Deverapalli.

Our cells can at most become an organ, he says. They cannot create another life.

The umbilical cord blood is collected by a doctor at birth, transported to the company, processed and cryogenically frozen to temperatures of minus 140 degrees Celsius, which Deverapalli says is about the surface temperature of Saturn.

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Huntsville blood bank to preserve umbilical cord tissues