Procurement of Cord/Cord Blood

• On receipt of your signed consent form, we will send you our cord blood or cord blood plus collection kit depending upon your chosen option.  The package will also include clear and concise instructions to follow at every step.

• The collection of umbilical cord/cord blood will be performed at the hospital, birth unit or at home (in case of home birth) by the authorised healthcare professional in compliance with the relevant HTA regulations.

• We would assist the parents for booking a qualified/authorised phlebotomist for collection of cord blood, as well as ensuring that we had a third party agreement with the hospital/obstetrics consultant, in case of a private patient.

• After the birth, cord/cord blood sample will be picked up by our certified international courier service (DHL) for delivering to the designated Cryo-Save labs; where the sample will be processed, tested, cryopreserved and eventually stored for the initial period of 20 year.

Processing, Testing, Cryopreservation and Storage of Cord/Cord Blood Stem Cells

• Stem cells are prepared for preservation after determining their quantity and quality using state of the art technology at our labs. The quality and quantity is ensured through PCR Analysis and Cellularity Verification based on the following medical and lab tests performed on the cord blood specimen:

1. Medical Tests include; Lues Serology, CMV IgG, Hep Bs Ag, Anti-HepC AB and Anti-HIV.

2. Lab Tests include; Mononuclear Cells (MNC) count (x 10 exp 8), amount of CD 34+ Cells; Vitality (%) and Bacteriology.

• For the purposes of security and to assure that your baby’s stem cells are assigned individually, they will be identified using separate unique barcodes.

• The additional security of cells is ensured by operating the dual storage system. The stem cells are divided into two containers and preserved at below -180°C in the vapour phase of liquid nitrogen at two physically separated storage banks; this process is called cryopreservation.

• We store stem cells and not the whole blood, by using the latest technology for removal and separation of stem cells from umbilical cord blood. This benefits the vitality of stem cells and prevents toxicity. We store cord blood stem cells in bags with an extra bag at the top to take a small stem cell sample for pre-transplant testing of the sample without having to unfreeze the main sample. This gives our clients a total of four parts of stem cell samples.



• We also facilitate cryo-preservation of umbilical cord in addition to the umbilical cord blood stem cells. The umbilical cord is rich in Mesenchymal Stem Cells that have the unique ability to help a damaged organ to regenerate, and are often found in the damaged tissues.

• Should cord blood sample not correspond to the minimum requirements, we will leave it up to the parents to decide not to freeze the sample to avoid any additional cost. This means that we do not charge processing and storage fee for a failed sample; and we store borderline samples at our own cost until sample is made usable on expansion technique becoming available in the future.

• You will receive the storage certificate for a successful sample approximately six weeks following the birth and the preserved stem cells can be made available as and when required for the transplant.

• We will store your baby’s stem cells for 20 years. After that time, your child may decide himself whether to continue or terminate the storage.

• We assist our clients at every stage being available on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

• For your safety, our entire service activities and operations are fully covered by AON Liability Insurance View Certificate