To better evaluate the future benefits of storing cord blood cells, it is imperative to understand the present knowledge of its clinical utilization. Every day, new studies are published, describing the potential of cord blood cells to treat various diseases. How do we know that a certain scientific claim regarding the clinical benefit of any technology is valid? The ultimate prove for any claimed benefit is its approved utilization by regulatory agency such as the FDA. However, the road to obtain such approval is long and costly.


Nonetheless, preliminary results in clinical studies, or even prove of concept in animal disease models, may provide a good indication on future potential of certain technology, if taken with caution. In this long road of proving clinical effectiveness, the earlier stages of research are usually experiments carried out in test tubes, or "ex vivo", as termed for biological activities tested in artificial laboratory setup. Except for bone marrow transplantation (BMT), most of the claims attributing potential clinical benefit to cord blood cells are based today on these very early stages of test tube studies. This does not diminish the validity of such scientific data, but should be part of the considerations in any investment that an individual would like to commit.


Clinical utilization of cord blood cells may be divided into two major categories. The first is regeneration of ablated bone marrow, and the second is regeneration of many other tissues which are affected by numerous diseases. The first, bone marrow transplantation (BMT), which is the use of stem and progenitor blood cells to rebuild the damaged tissue responsible to produce all the blood cells in our body. BMT is widely used today for treatment of hematological malignancies. The second category is a broad range of diseases which occur more frequently in elderly people, and are associated with degeneration and malfunction of tissues such as heart, liver, blood vessels, bone, neural cells and others. It is believed that this category of diseases would be amenable to treatment with living cells, and especially with stem cells, an approach termed regenerative medicine.