a great question to ask. till date there has been no authenticated use of stem cells to provide answer to any disorders except may be blood cancer that too in limited cases. I personally feel it is an exploitation. I wonder if stem cell can really help reverse any ailment effectively. I appreciate your question

Dear Wojciech,

I am working at a stem cell bank. We are doing both allogeneic and autologous cord blood storage. One thing is clear: Cord blood is far too valuable to throw it away (that is exactly happening if you do not donate). While there is no doubt about the necessity to store cord blood for allogeneic transplantation in for example leucemic patients, so far it is not yet clear how long it will take until medical techniques are implemented for the usage of autologous cells. This is what we tell parents who think about autologous storage: So far, it is an investment into the future, something like buying a part of land on the moon! However, scientific developments in this field are rapidly evolving, and I am pretty sure that I will live to see skin, bone and cartilage be grown from such cells and be transplanted into the recipients. We are not so far away from that.

So, if you decide not to store the cord blood privately for your child, please at least think about donating it!

Thank you for valuable opinions. What do you think about umbilical cord. There is a new option to storage. Is it was used in practice? What is a potential?

Best Regards WS

We are just about to begin storing cords as well. The interest in cords is due to their very high content of mesenchymal stem cells. These cells also have a very high potential regarding tissue engineering.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=klein+strobel+weisbach

Thank for your a valuable opinion. Do you know any practical use of cords? I mean practical use that was finished as successful. I don't negate their potential, but I'm interesting about present opportunities.

Best Regards WS

 As such, cord or cord blood derived cells have not been widely used in clinical settings. So far, some case reports exist. Mostly, you will encounter legal problems with such cells, as they need to be produced according to GMP rules, and should not be bred in bovine serum, for example. However, as stated above, these applications will be developed, and probably sooner than we all imagine.

Some examples of use of cord blood derived cells can be found if you search pubmed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=human+umbilical+cord+blood+derived+mesenchymal+stem+cells