Despite a common misconception, umbilical cord blood is not a panacea for all diseases or future illnesses, Buddhist Tzu Chi Stem Cells Center director Yang Kuo-liang (楊國梁) said yesterday.
“Some parents are led to believe that a newborn’s cord blood could be used to treat his or her biological relatives’ rectal, ovarian or cervical cancers, which is nothing but a myth,” Yang said on the sidelines of a press conference held by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Taipei.
The FDA held the press conference to highlight the need for expectant parents to exercise caution when considering whether to bank their babies’ cord blood.
Several private storage firms have sprung up in recent years in response to a growing demand for such facilities.
Cord blood is mainly used to rebuild people’s hematopoietic (blood-cell producing) function, and to treat blood diseases and a number of rare disorders, such as neuroblastoma, a cancer that almost exclusively strikes children aged under the age of five, Yang said.
Other potential applications, such as in the treatment of stroke and spinal cord injuries, are still in the clinical trial phase and it could take years or decades before such procedures could gain approval from the FDA, Yang said.
FDA Division of Risk Management Director Tsai Shu-chen (蔡淑貞) said cord blood banking facilities are prohibited from making promises about procedures involving cord blood expected to be developed in the future or claiming that other diseases aside from the 29 cited by the FDA can be treated with cord blood.
Violators can face fines ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$500,000 (US$3,300 to US$16,600), as stipulated in Article 16 of the Regulations for Administration on Human Organ Banks (人體器官保存庫管理辦法) and Item 2 of Article 18-1 of the Organ Transplant Act (人體器官移植條例), Tsai said.
Rather than preserving newborns’ cord blood for personal use, parents-to-be are encouraged to donate it to a public cord blood bank.
“What most parents do not know is that once their child’s weight exceeds 20kg, the chances of successfully using his or her own cord blood for a procedure are almost zero... I believe the large sums of money required to bank a child’s cord blood would be better spent on his or her education,” Yang said.
Almost every Taiwanese would be able to find matching cord blood units at public cord blood banks because even a partial match of four out of six alleles would be considered acceptable, Yang said.
The cost of a cord blood transplant can be prohibitive, especially for financially disadvantaged families, which is why the center has joined hands with the Taiwan Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation to launch a three-year program, Yang said.
“The program will select 30 people a year who need a cord blood transplant and provide each of them with two free units of cord blood, which could cost as much as NT$600,000 per unit in Taiwan,” Yang said.
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