The St. Louis Cord Blood Bank

As a mother-to-be, you can decide that your baby’s first act may be saving another person’s life. You can do this by choosing to donate your baby’s umbilical cord blood to the St. Louis Cord Blood Bank’s First Gift℠ Donation Program. Your free donation will be part of a program that supports research to discover new uses for cord blood stem cells. The St. Louis Cord Blood Bank has banked 28,000 cord blood units that are stored and available to patients all over the world and has provided 2,950 units for patient transplantation for over 80 different diseases.

Because the current inventory of banked cord bloods is sufficient for patient needs, we are focused on collecting cord blood for research purposes only to help our colleagues find new applications for the use of cord blood. Twenty-five years ago the use of cord blood for transplantation was research. Now it is an approved source for stem cell therapy. We hope to be a part of the discovery of the next novel therapy using cord blood. A search of clinicaltrials.gov shows that there are over 1000 clinical trials (in the United States alone), in various stages, that involve the use of umbilical cord blood. The St. Louis area is a prominent contributor to cord blood donations. Researchers from all over the country and internationally reach out to the SLCBB to provide exceptional cord blood for their studies.

The process is safe, painless, easy and FREE. Your physician or midwife collects the cord blood after your baby has delivered, so it does not interfere with the birthing process. The collection will not take place if there is any concern for your safety or that of your baby.