The US House on Saturday December 20th. passed 413-0 an amended version of a bill (HR 2520) that would authorize $79 million in federal funding for the collection and storage of umbilical cord blood.
Objective: To provide for the collection and maintenance of human cord blood stem cells for the treatment of patients and research.
A press release said:
The objective is 150,000 units, which would mean 90 percent of patients needing them would have a match.
Read via National Marrow Donor Program here.
White House PDF here. (PDF Format)
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Summary:
Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to contract with qualified cord blood stem cell banks to assist in the collection and maintenance of human cord blood to be made available for transplantation through the C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program. Requires the Secretary to require that recipients of such contracts: (1) acquire, tissue-type, test, cryopreserve, and store donated units of human cord blood acquired with the informed consent of the donor in a manner that complies with applicable federal and state regulations; (2) make collected cord blood units available for stem cell transplantation or, if not appropriate for clinical use, available for peer-reviewed research; and (3) submit data for the Program and for inclusion in the stem cell therapeutic outcomes database. Limits such contracts to three years unless the Secretary: (1) finds that an inadequate amount of high-quality human cord blood has not been collected; and (2) does not receive an application from a cell bank that has not entered into such a contract or the Secretary determines that outstanding inventory need cannot be met by the one or more qualified cord blood stem cell banks that have submitted an application.
