The placenta delivers oxygen and vital nutrients to your baby through blood vessels protected in the umbilical cord. After your baby is born, the placenta detaches from the womb and is (called “the afterbirth”) delivered after the baby. The umbilical cord and placenta are most often discarded as medical waste. However, the blood that remains in these tissues contains a special type of stem cell called hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which can develop into any of the blood cells in our bodies. HSCs are like bone marrow progenitor blood cells and share the same capacity to form all the elements of our blood system.

Cord blood and placenta banking is the process of taking the blood that remains in the umbilical cord and placenta after delivery and processing it to cryopreserve the stem cells for potential future use. These stem cells can be used for medical treatments for many diseases.

Cord Blood Uses

The stem cells in your baby’s umbilical cord and placental blood can renew themselves and differentiate into all the blood forming cells necessary for those functions. They have been used to help treat many life-threatening diseases, including:

• Blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma
• Immune disorders
• Anemias, such as sickle cell disease and Fanconi Anemia

Placental Blood Banking

After the birth of your baby, the healthcare provider will collect blood from the umbilical cord into a blood bag. The blood bag is sent to Lifebank for processing to isolate and preserve the stem cells present in the cord blood. Even after the cord blood is collected, additional blood remains in the vessels of the placenta. Lifebank has a proprietary technology to extract this blood from the placenta. We then isolate and preserve these special stem cells the same way we do for processing cord blood. This increases the number of your baby’s stem cells that can be preserved. Your healthcare provider simply clamps the umbilical cord and sends the whole placenta to Lifebank®, where our specially trained lab technicians devoted to this process take care of the rest.

Cord & Placental Blood Stem Cells vs. Cord & Placenta Tissue Stem Cells?

The stem cells found in cord blood and placental blood (or HSCs) begin to primarily be found in the bone marrow to carry out blood production as the baby is ready to be born.  These stem cells can also be identified in the peripheral blood that circulates through our bodies (such as your heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins). These cells have be used in treatments in more than a million patients worldwide.¹

Cord and placenta tissue stem cells differ from HSCs as they are rich in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and mesenchymal-like stem cells. MSCs have demonstrated unique regenerative capabilities and research indicates that they may have the ability to help rebuild or regrow tissues, muscles, bones, or even nerves damaged by disease. While there is no currently approved use for MSCs, they are being used in hundreds of clinical trials for applications ranging from neurodegenerative and cardiac disorders to cancers.

Similar, but Different from Peripheral Blood & Bone Marrow Cells

The HSCs in cord and placental blood are more primitive than those found in adult bone marrow and peripheral blood and have several advantages, including high proliferative capacity.² Stem cell proliferation is the multiplication or reproduction of stem cells for continuous self-renewal. Stem cells found in your baby’s umbilical cord are also less likely to lead to the more common complications following transplant. Two of the most frequent complications of stem cell transplantation are transplant rejection and graft versus host disease, or GvHD (Graft Versus Host Disease) (which develops when blood cells from the donor’s stem cells attack the recipient’s cells and tissue).  GvHD only occurs with allogenic transplants which occur between two different individuals.  This does not occur if stem cells are used in the same individual they were collected from.

Afterbirth Stem Cells are Different from Embryonic Stem Cells

Cord blood and placenta stem cells should not be confused with embryonic stem cells. While embryonic stem cells are considered controversial, stem cells from postpartum biomaterials (e.g., the placenta and cord blood) are not. This is because cord blood is collected from the afterbirth (i.e., the placenta and umbilical cord) after your baby is born following normal procedures. There is no impact to the birthing process or baby.

¹ Niederwieser, Dietger, Baldomero, Helen, et al. One and a half million hematopoietic stem cell transplants: continuous and differential improvement in worldwide access with the use of non-identical family donors. Haematologica. Vol. 107 No. 5 (2022): May, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3324/haematol.2021.279189. Accessed June 18, 2024.

² Hordyjewska, A., Popiołek, L. & Horecka, A. Characteristics of hematopoietic stem cells of umbilical cord blood. Cytotechnology 67, 387–396 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-014-9796-y. Accessed June 18, 2024.