CordBank News

In February 2010, a study reporting the successful treatment of spinal cord injury in dogs using cord blood was released – with researchers confident that the this technique has many potential applications in the treatment of human spinal cord injury. While previous research on spinal cord injury has typically used rats, this study used dogs…

Stem cells that could one day provide therapeutic options for muscle and bone disorders can be easily harvested from the umbilical cord, just as the blood that goes through it provides precursor cells to treat some blood disorders, said University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers in the online version of the Journal of Biomedicine…

A study initiated by the World Health Organization and published in the May Journal of the American Medical Association shows that stem cell transplantation has become an accepted therapy worldwide and that the majority of transplant patients received a source of their own (autologous) stem cells. This global study evaluated the more than 50,000 stem…

The O’Neill family from Cambridge are the first New Zealanders to take part in a ground breaking medical study into cystic fibrosis, thanks to the generosity of CordBank. The O’Neills decided to bank the cord blood of their second son, Lenny, in the hope that it may one day be able to help treat his…

A foundation established by Julian Robertson, New Zealand’s first honorary knight and prominent philanthropist, has given $10.2 million to Duke University in the USA to advance the use of cord blood as a therapy. Robertson, who is renowned for his philanthropy and investment in New Zealand, has over the last 15 years developed two luxury…

Major news outlets recently reported research demonstrating that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), a specific type of stem cell with unique properties, restored transparency to the cloudy corneas of laboratory mice.  The data, presented by researchers during the American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting in December 2009, suggests that transplantation of umbilical MSCs could be…

At Children’s Memorial Hermann, pediatric trauma expert Dr. Charles Cox is studying cord blood to see if it can regenerate damaged brain tissues. “Cord blood is one piece of that puzzle,” Cox said. “There aren’t any good restorative therapies for brain injury, which is why we got into this years and years ago.” So far, cord…

From The Times February 17, 2010 Mark Henderson, Science Editor The medical potential of reprogrammed stem cells that do not require the destruction of embryos has been exaggerated, according to the head of one of the world’s leading regenerative medicine companies. Thomas Okarma, the chief executive of Geron Corporation, told The Times that while so-called…