Umbilical cord blood is known as the “Bank of Life”, however, in reality, people still have little knowledge about cord blood. So, what is the use of cord blood? Is it necessary to save it? Storage of umbilical cord blood to life “backup” City Center Hospital, director of hematology Lian Shimei said, umbilical cord blood is the fetal delivery umbilical cord residue in the umbilical cord and placenta in the blood, containing can rebuild the human hematopoietic and immune system hematopoietic stem cells, can be used for hematopoietic stem cell transplants, treatment of a variety of diseases, and therefore also by the industry has been called the “life bank”. Therefore, it is also referred to as “life bank” and “cord blood bank” by the industry. From the current global autologous cord blood transplantation cases, cord blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can treat blood system diseases, such as aplastic anemia and leukemia. It can be used for neurological diseases, such as cerebral palsy and brain injury. In addition, it is used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and has been clinically verified, while allogeneic cord blood transplantation involves more than 80 kinds of diseases. Currently, the approved indications for cord blood treatment in China include bone marrow failure, hemoglobinopathies, severe immunodeficiency diseases, metabolic disorders, acute leukemia, chronic leukemia, and so on. Self-storage cord blood can not “cure all diseases” According to practice Shimei introduction, some diseases are due to congenital or hereditary factors, umbilical cord blood cells are also present in these undesirable factors, indicating that the child’s genes in the congenital or the mother in the pregnancy was adversely affected by the umbilical cord blood itself has a problem, so can not be used to treat the disease of the autologous umbilical cord blood, and is not suitable for preservation. suitable for preservation. In addition, for patients undergoing transplantation, it is more appropriate to use cord blood in children under 20 kilograms. The number of hematopoietic stem cells contained in cord blood is limited, and with the prolongation of the preservation time, for example, 20 years, the number and activity of the stem cells will diminish. Experts remind that cord blood cannot cure all diseases. If you can’t use cord blood for the disease you have, it will be useless even if you have saved cord blood. According to the statistics of relevant organizations, although the incidence of various blood diseases has a tendency to increase year by year, the incidence rate is still a low probability event compared with other common diseases, and the percentage of those who need to be transplanted is even less, which is a very small probability event, and the occurrence of diseases requiring stem cell transplantation before the age of 20 is even more of a small probability event. Therefore, the probability of actually applying preserved autologous umbilical cord blood for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is very small. However, if someone else needs a transplant due to a disease, the probability of using this cord blood is very high if the matching is successful. Placenta blood can save a family of three generations is purely foolhardy Recently, some organizations claimed that the placenta can be stored to extract placental stem cells, which can treat myocardial infarction, diabetes and many other diseases. “Placenta should be stored as a life-saving remedy”, “placenta blood can save a family of three generations” of publicity makes people very confused. In this regard, Lian Shimei explained that people tend to confuse umbilical cord blood and placental tissue. Placenta tissue contains placental sub-total stem cells, placental mesenchymal stem cells and placental mother stem cells. It is not easy to extract stem cells from placenta tissue, the structure of the placenta is complex, the operation is cumbersome, time-consuming and involves dozens of chemical reagents, which faces a great risk of contamination by exogenous reagents, coupled with the fact that the collection of placenta is an open collection, which is likely to lead to the contamination of pathogenic microorganisms during the preparation process, and the safety can not be guaranteed. Therefore, at present, umbilical cord blood hematopoietic stem cells are the only hematopoietic stem cells licensed by the state for clinical use. Placental sub totipotent stem cells, placental mesenchymal stem cells and placental mother stem cells extracted from the placenta cannot be legally used in clinical hospitals.