Freezing process and the costs for umbilical cord bloo

In earlier times, the umbilical cord blood was considered as biological waste. However now it is well known source of the hematopoietic stem cells which are quite similar to those that are present in the bone marrow and peripheral blood. These are quite useful for a person’s immune system as well as treating diseases like leukemia, immune deficiencies and severe aplastic anemia and congenital disorders like sickle cell anemia and thalassemia.

In cord blood banks a number of processing and storage techniques are used. In any of these methods, a freezing solution is deployed which contains dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and it is added to the product.

This is further frozen at a controlled rate since the cells have to be frozen in such a way that they do not get damaged. DMSO is added to the solution since it is a cryoprotectant and it is added to provide protection to the cells at cold temperatures.

After this the cooling of the product is carried out before it is kept in the storage freezer. In controlled rate freezing certain equipments are used like a computer for freezing the cells and to make the appropriate settings for the freezing process.

The cells are brought to a temperature of -80 C or even colder before transferring to the storage tank. Nitrogen is present in a liquid state at a temperature of -196 C and this helps to keep the atmosphere frozen for the products.

The private umbilical cord blood banks charge two kinds of fees. The payment may range from $1,500 to $1,800. The cost of freezing the umbilical cord blood is included in this. The cost may appear quite high but this is because of the expensive technology and the equipment that has to be used.

Some blood banks can even charge up to $1,000 so that the inert umbilical cord blood is kept healthy. However there are a number of complicated scientific processes that can be attributed to this. The cost of freezing umbilical cord blood is high since firstly the blood has to be gravity-extracted, and then checked for any signs of infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis. This is followed by the elimination of the red blood cells which leaves only bacteria-fighting white blood cells and the undeveloped stem cells. At last the blood is sealed and frozen.

Thus the entire process requires a lot of money.However there are a lot of alternatives if you do not wish to store the cord blood in the bank. You can buy the cord blood as well if you are in need of it to fulfill your requirements. However, this is much more costly as compared to storing the cord blood. In fact most of the public cord blood banks charge around $15,000 for just a single unit of blood.

You can gather additional information by simply logging on to different websites. A lot of information can be obtained since a number of such umbilical cord blood banks have come up.

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Freezing process and the costs for umbilical cord blood