Stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood may help cure an adult later in life when facing a serious illness. Parents that would like to give their newborns a potential safety net health-wise are now able to do so also in Slovenia, according to a report.
The service is not cheap though, according to Thursday's edition of daily Dnevnik. The procedure in which umbilical cells are obtained and storage costs 1,800 euros. The first provider of the service in Slovenia is Neocelica in cooperation with Cryo-Save, the largest private stem cell bank in Europe.
The paper quotes the company's director Samo Borko, who says that the procedure is simple: "The parents call a free line...or contact us by e-mail. We usually first answer their questions, and then sign a contract. They pay EUR 250 upon signing, and the rest when the lab notifies us that the procedure has been successful."
Neocelica's job is to see to it that blood samples are taken at the maternity hospital and that these are then safely brought to the central laboratory in Belgium.
The laboratory performs the necessary analyses to establish the quality of the stem cells and then divides them to have two samples in order to ensure 100% identification. One is kept in Belgium, while the other is stored in the Netherlands, Borko pointed out.
According to him, such procedures are currently available at maternity hospitals in Ljubljana, Maribor and Postojna, while Neocelica also works with the Tissue Profiling Centre of the Transfusion Medicine Institute.
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