WideCells Group CSO Peter Hollands provides insight into the use of cord blood for transfusions:
Medical professionals administer peripheral blood donated from adults for transfusion in the event of serious injury, surgery, bleeding and in some terminal illnesses.
This works well but supplies are often limited especially in times of disaster.
“It is time that the rest of the world recognised the importance of cord blood as a transfusion product.”
Every time a baby is born, anywhere in the world, it is possible to very easily collect umbilical cord blood which has been shown by my colleague, Professor Niranjan Bhattacharya, to be an excellent alternative to donated adult blood for use in transfusion.
Cord blood contains:
- Fetal haemoglobin which carries more oxygen than adult haemoglobin allowing better oxygenation of the transfused patient
- Growth factors and cytokines which have a beneficial healing effect on the recipient patient
- Stem cells which could even be involved in repair of damaged and diseased tissue in the recipient patient
Cord blood would, of course, need to be screened, grouped and cross matched in the same way as adult blood before use using the same infrastructure which is already in place for adult blood.
