Overview

Cord blood is the blood that remains in your baby's umbilical cord and placenta after the baby has been born and the umbilical cord has been cut.

The cord blood contains a potent mixture of cells, including stem cells, which are the ‘building blocks’ of all cells in the body. Umbilical cord blood is well recognised in the treatment of blood disorders, including leukaemia and some cancers.

Collecting the umbilical cord blood is not harmful to the baby. If you don’t choose to store your baby’s cord blood, it will normally be discarded as medical waste.
Overview

Cell Care is the first Australian cord bank to offer parents the opportunity to bank cord tissue. This means storing a small complete part of the umbilical cord – which is rich in cells not found in cord blood, and for which potentially different types of therapies might emerge in the future.

Although previously not available in Australia, cord tissue banking is now commonplace in the US, Europe and Asia. The presence of cord tissue banking in Australia opens the door to potential regenerative medicine therapies to Australian parents.
It should be noted that there are currently no approved therapies utilising cells from cord tissue (see the section “Cord Tissue Banking”). If such therapies come available, there is no guarantee that cord tissue collected and stored today will be able to be used for the purpose of such therapies.

Cell Care - Australia’s Family Cord Bank

Cord blood and cord tissue banking enables you to store your baby’s birth stem cells, so that they are available for possible future medical treatment for his or her lifetime. By storing your baby’s cells, you are ensuring that he or she has a reserve of stem cells for life that are a perfect genetic match. In the past, these cells were routinely discarded as medical waste. Importantly, there is only one opportunity to collect these cells – and that is at the time of birth.