[Founding Father]

I never thought I'd be in favor of a bill sponsored by Specter, Harkin and Dodd. I believe I'd cut AIDS funding, for a cure of a mostly self-inflicted disease, and increase funding for this.

[isthisnickcool]

Anyone here going to have a child soon? Make sure you obtain the UC fluids and have them frozen. The odds are you will never need them but if you do, say of the child gets cancer, it might save them or keep them alive longer.

[Coleus]

US Senate expected to establish National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Network, with $79 million (19th July)

The US Senate is expected to pass legislation to provide $79 million in funding over the next five years to establish and maintain a National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Network, after legislation was passed by Congress in May by a vote of 430 to 1. The Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 is strongly supported by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), which represents 14 of the public cord blood banks. The legislation follows the recommendations of a Congress-commissioned report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) which found that about 11,700 people in the United States could benefit from hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) transplantation each year, but only 1,700 patients currently receive a cord blood stem cell transplant.

Cord blood stem cell transplants have saved the lives of 20,000 Americans suffering from conditions including leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia and other genetic disorders, but inadequate collection of umbilical cord blood means that thousands of patients die every year waiting for a match. The IOM report states that the median time for locating an HLA match is now more than four months, but others say that finding a match may happen almost instantaneously or never because there is no national system of collection. Currently private and public cord blood banks lack uniform standards for collecting and storing blood and are unable to match tissue rapidly enough to treat patients.

The National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Network would create a national resource of umbilical cord stem cells, overhauling the current system of uncoordinated public and private banks, accrediting banks, setting standards and providing much greater coordination, resources and quality assurance. There are currently only 50,000 usable units of cord blood in US public banks, and at least 100,000 more high-quality units are necessary. Kristine M. Gebbie, lead author of the IOM report also highlights the importance of a national system of cord blood collection to enable much greater research and understanding of how umbilical cord stem cells can be used to treat patients. Researchers including Joanne Kurtzberg, chief of the division of bone and marrow transplantation at Duke University, note that there will be many new uses for cord blood stem cells developing over the next two decades, in the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other forms of tissue repair and regeneration and a national bank of umbilical cord stem cells is a vital resource.

The Scientist Volume 19, Issue 14,Page 42, Jul. 18, 2005

[SuziQ]

Awesome!! It is my hope that more research will be done on Cord Blood Stem cells, to prove their efficacy compared to Embryonic Stem Cells.