Why Placenta Stem Cells?

At an increasing rate, expectant parents are storing cord blood for the health benefits that it may someday offer their children, themselves, or other family members. This is a wise decision because not only are stem cells already being used in life-saving therapies, but also researchers are continuing to discover more and better uses in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases.

However, what most cord blood banks don’t tell you is that cord blood from the umbilical cord simply doesn't contain enough stem cells to effectively treat an adult patient (or anyone over approximately 65 pounds on average).

Unlike our competitors, Americord offers you the ability to harvest many times more stem cells as compared to traditional cord blood banking through our proprietary CordAdvantage product (available later this year), which harvests stem cells from the placenta in addition to the umbilical cord blood. Banking stem cells is a significant investment, so why bother spending all of this money for this once in a lifetime opportunity if the stem cells cannot be used for the duration of the child's life?

While certain competitors and information resources cite examples where stem cells from umbilical cord blood has been used in adults, it is important to know that this has only been tried when there aren't enough stem cells to treat the patient otherwise. Doing so is not the recommended therapy since the odds of success are very low because the amount of stem cells is not large enough for the patient.

See Why Is It Important to Save A Large Amount Of Stem Cells? for a summary of medical research on the correlation between survival rates and the amount of stem cells used in stem cell transplants.

Americord's ability to harvest stem cells from the placental cord blood is significant.  Doctors are enthusiastic about the potential use of the particular types of stem cells that are found in the placenta in the emerging fields of gene therapy and cellular repair. When you bank your baby's placental cord blood stem cells, you are saving what may be a key component to potential future medical treatments and cures.