Claims of cord blood storage may be just speculative

A senior lecturer at the University of Malta and blood cell expert, Dr Pierre Schembri Wismayer, has criticised what he described as the 'inflated claims' that private companies use to promote cord blood banking for new-borns.

Cord blood banking is the extraction of blood from the umbilical cord, to be frozen with the intention of using stem cell research to cure future illnesses in the child.

Schembri Wismayer, a PhD in molecular oncology from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, has spent a career researching stem cells, differentiation and cancer, and while pointing out that public cord blood banking was "recommendable", he does not quite share the same sentiment when the banking of cord blood becomes privatised.

Writing in the University of Malta's research magazine Think, Schembri Wismayer said transplants from a child's own stem cells are useful in rare childhood tumours but companies store cord blood for 25 years, before the onset of adult diseases like Alzheimer's or diabetes

Contacted by MaltaToday, Schembri Wismayer reiterated this stance, claiming that respected entities such as the American Association of Pediatricians and the British Association of Gynaecology also do not recommend private cord blood storing.

Cord blood can be used to cure several inherited diseases such as thalassaemia and certain types of cancer such as leukaemia, but Schembri Wismayer cites official estimates showing 'only one in 50,000 children' will actually use privately-banked cord blood.

"One reason for this is because private companies only promise to store the cord blood for 25 years, which means that when diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's crop up - diseases which tend to affect us well beyond the age of 25 - the cord blood will long have been disposed of," he said.

"For some extra money, you can bank it for longer but no one has ever stored it for such lengths.  We don't even know if it would survive and still be useful," he said.

Schembri Wismayer said that while it was true that cord blood could treat diabetes, the private banks failed to specify which type of diabetes this was.

"Cord blood could help treat diabetes Type I, but it is the Type II that is very common in Malta and not the Type I," he said, adding that even in the first instance, a very long and expensive procedure, referred to as stem cell treatment, was required.

"Stem cell treatment is still a very rare occurrence, and not only in Malta. In fact, the first two cases where stem cell treatment was carried out was only last year," he said.

Schembri Wismayer also said that the amount of stem cells in a new-born's umbilical cord was only enough to restore the bone marrow of a 50kg person.

"Banking is either for children or rather petite people," he said, stressing that while research has been carried out to increase such stem cells, none were close to actually being used.

He did admit, however, that it may prove viable for families likely to develop such diseases, as well as for parents of non-European origin. In the latter's case, difficulties could arise when trying to find matching units at European cord banks.

Schembri Wismayer was part of a team of doctors who drafted a proposal 15 years ago  to set up a public cord blood extraction service. "The government at the time deemed it to be too expensive... in future, science will make it possible to take an adult's cell and transform it into a stem cell. This, essentially, would mean that this service could become available to everyone," he said.