Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN

User menu

Search

  • Advanced search
CMAJ
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN
CMAJ

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • Visit CMAJ on Facebook
  • Follow CMAJ on Twitter
  • Follow CMAJ on Pinterest
  • Follow CMAJ on Youtube
  • Follow CMAJ on Instagram
News

Canada’s genetic heterogeneity an asset in cord blood banking

Ann Silversides
CMAJ June 23, 2009 180 (13) E117; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.090989
Ann Silversides
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

When Kathleen O’Grady was pregnant with her first child, her Montréal, Quebec, physician was very keen for her to donate her umbilical cord blood to Héma Québec’s public cord blood bank.

The reason? O’Grady and her husband form a mixed-race couple — she is of Irish-French heritage while her husband is an Ismaili-Indian from East Africa. Worldwide there is a need for ethnic and racial diversity of banked cord blood for use in “regrowing” the blood of people, especially children, who have undergone chemotherapy or suffer from some genetic diseases.

In an effort to ensure “equitable access to transplantation,” the proposed national public cord blood bank would — as the Héma Québec bank is already doing — focus on collecting umbilical cord blood that reflects the population’s genetic heterogeneity. Also targeted would be First Nations and people from other distinct ethnic clusterings, who are seriously underrepresented in bone marrow donor registries.

Canada has moved slowly toward creating a public cord blood bank, but “I think that gives us an opportunity to set up a thoughtful cord bank … to look at what donor types are missing and to contribute in a world-leading way,” says Dr. Clayton Smith, director of British Columbia’s clinical leukemia and bone marrow transplant program and a stem cell researcher with the Terry Fox Laboratory in Vancouver, BC.

O’Grady, an Ottawa, Ontario, consultant, says her family doctor suggested donating her cord blood during the first trimester. “She wanted to make sure we filled out the forms. Héma Québec phoned to verify the information … and someone from there even came after the birth to take more information.”

In contrast, when O’Grady gave birth to her second child in an Ottawa hospital, cord blood banking was never mentioned. And when she made a few efforts on her own to find out about donating publicly a second time, she couldn’t find any information. Hence her umbilical cord blood from that birth — so precious in Quebec — was discarded, like the overwhelming majority of all cord blood in Canada.

Figure1
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

International blood agencies search registries worldwide to find matches for patients needing transplants. Image courtesy of Photos.com

While physicians have for many years called for a national publicly funded cord blood bank in Canada, it is private commercial banks that have flourished. There are about a dozen operating in Canada and the vast majority of stored cord blood is stored privately. These banks charge more than $2000 to bank and store umbilical cord blood for the exclusive use of a donor’s family.

“We don’t view the private banks as competition,” says Sue Smith, executive director of OneMatch, the division of Canadian Blood Services that searches for stem cell transplants from unrelated donors.

Indeed, private banks don’t appear to view a public bank as competition — according to Smith, private bank operators support the idea of a national public bank.

But private cord blood banking is controversial. “Few pediatric transplant surgeons endorse private cord blood banking in the absence of an identified recipient, even for mixed-ethnicity children for whom finding a suitably matched unrelated donor may be difficult” (Pediatrics 2009;123:1011–17)

In a policy statement, Canada’s stem cell network takes the position that there isn’t enough evidence to recommend private banking “in the absence of a defined medical risk (e.g. a sibling or other family member with a genetic or malignant condition that could potentially benefit from UCB [umbilical cord blood] transplant).”

And in its 2006 policy statement on the utility of private cord blood banking, the World Marrow Donor Association recommended that national governments not provide promotional support or funding for private banks “in the absence of a medical indication.”

Footnotes

  • Published at www.cmaj.ca on Jun. 10.

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 180 (13)
CMAJ
Vol. 180, Issue 13
23 Jun 2009
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author

Article tools

Respond to this article
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
To sign up for email alerts or to access your current email alerts, enter your email address below:
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on CMAJ.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Canada’s genetic heterogeneity an asset in cord blood banking
(Your Name) has sent you a message from CMAJ
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the CMAJ web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Canada’s genetic heterogeneity an asset in cord blood banking
Ann Silversides
CMAJ Jun 2009, 180 (13) E117; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.090989

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
‍ Request Permissions
Share
Canada’s genetic heterogeneity an asset in cord blood banking
Ann Silversides
CMAJ Jun 2009, 180 (13) E117; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.090989
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Footnotes
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Trudeau promises to boost federal health transfers when the pandemic is over
  • Does shaming have a place in public health?
  • Should Canada aim for #CovidZero?
Show more News

Similar Articles

Collections

  • Topics
    • Pediatrics
    • Canadian government

Content

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Collections
  • Sections
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Alerts
  • RSS
  • Early releases

Information for

  • Advertisers
  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • CMA Members
  • Media
  • Reprint requests
  • Subscribers

About

  • General Information
  • Journal staff
  • Editorial Board
  • Governance Council
  • Journal Oversight
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright and Permissions

Copyright 2021, Joule Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. ISSN 1488-2329 (e) 0820-3946 (p)

All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.

Powered by HighWire