King Abdullah International Medical Research Center Cord Blood Bank (KAIMRC CBB) is a non-profit public cord blood bank. The KAIMRC CBB has been established and authorized to function as a public bank for cord blood units, which can be used to provide treatment for patients who require clinically approved Cellular Therapy (i.e. unrelated use), or for intended families with history of hematological disorders.
Cord blood is the blood that remains in the vein of the umbilical cord and placenta at the time of birth. Recent literature demonstrates that umbilical cord blood is rich in hematopoietic stem cells, which differentiate to all other blood cells and is the foundation of our bodies’ immune system. Cord blood stem cells are already being used to treat nearly 80 diseases, including leukemia, lymphoma, anemia, and inherited metabolic disorders. Over 30,000 transplants have been performed worldwide using stem cells from umbilical cord blood. Since stem cell technologies continue to advance, the opportunities to use preserved cord blood stem cells are steadily increasing.
The KAIMRC CBB is responsible for prospective donor mothers’ recruitment and consent, cord blood collection, processing, testing, cryopreservation, storage, banking, listing, selection and distribution of collected cord blood units.
Cord blood units that do not meet the criteria can be collected and stored for further research purposes to improve the clinical results of such treatment.
As part of our mandate, CBB activities are conducted within a quality system in compliance with national and international standards. On September 15, 2015, KAIMRC CBB received the FACT (Foundation for Accreditation of Cellular Therapy) Accreditation for banking cord blood for both public and intended patient’s family use by demonstrating compliance with the NETCORD-FACT International Standards for Cord Blood Collection, Processing, Testing, Banking, Selection and Release. KAIMRC CBB is the first cord blood bank in the Kingdom and in the Arab world to be recognized and accredited by FACT (http://www.factwebsite.org/Inner.aspx?id=1215&blogid=86&terms=news).