Cord Blood and Its Uses
Cord blood is the blood that circulates through the umbilical cord from the foetus to the placenta. After delivery, the placenta is almost always thrown away. Yet this humble umbilical cord has become a life saving and precious commodity, because cord blood is rich in blood stem cells.
Blood stem cells are young or immature cells that can transform into other forms of essential blood cell types, such as red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The use of blood stem cells has emerged as a potentially curative option for the treatment of several diseases, including blood cancers (such as leukemia and lymphoma), and severe anaemia (such as myelodysplastic syndrome, thalassemia major and severe aplastic anaemia).
Read more about this topic: Singapore Cord Blood Bank
Famous quotes containing the words cord and/or blood:
“The psychological umbilical cord is more difficult to cut than the real one. We experience our children as extensions of ourselves, and we feel as though their behavior is an expression of something within us...instead of an expression of something in them. We see in our children our own reflection, and when we don’t like what we see, we feel angry at the reflection.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The Indian attitude toward the land was expressed by a Crow named Curly: “The soil you see is not ordinary soil—it is the dust of the blood, the flesh, and the bones of our ancestors. You will have to dig down to find Nature’s earth, for the upper portion is Crow, my blood and my dead. I do not want to give it up.””
—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program. Montana: A State Guide Book (The WPA Guide to Montana)