corduse.com

CORD:USE Cord Blood Bank (formerly CORDUS) is a life sciences and services company focused upon providing proven high quality stem cell therapeutics to patients in need. To carry out its mission, CORD:USE operations consist of the collection, processing, storage and subsequent delivery of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells found in cord blood to transplant centers worldwide for their patients' needs. CORD:USE collects donated umbilical cord blood, customarily discarded as medical waste following the delivery of an infant, to help treat anyone in need of a potentially lifesaving stem cell transplant. CORD:USE processes these cord blood units at Duke University Medical Center under the supervision of Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, a pioneer and a world leader in cord blood stem cell transplantation. Dr. Kurtzberg is the Medical Director of the CORD:USE Cord Blood Bank at Duke. CORD:USE stores its cord blood units in the BioArchive® state-of-the-art, cryogenic freezer distributed by GE Healthcare, until they are needed for use in a transplant.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a critical component of therapies for more than 70 diseases including blood cancers (leukemias, lymphomas and myelomas) and other blood diseases such as sickle cell anemia and thalassemia. Blood stem cells have been harvested from donors' bone marrow for cellular therapeutic transplantation for almost 40 years. Despite the heroic efforts of the National Marrow Donor Program ("NMDP") since its inception in 1986, many patients in need of a potentially lifesaving stem cell transplantation die before a suitable match can be found from bone marrow donor registries throughout the world. Cord blood is known to be highly concentrated in blood stem cells, and has been proven to be as effective as bone marrow in stem cell transplantation for both children and adult patients. Please click on treatable diseases for more information on the conditions which have been successfully treated with cord blood stem cells.

CORD:USE was founded by obstetricians committed to making potentially lifesaving blood stem cell therapeutic products more widely available through their colleagues' collection of donated cord blood. CORD:USE covers the costs associated with cord blood donation, including the necessary testing and typing of donated units of cord blood for inclusion in the public inventory. The CORD:USE collection network will continue to focus on obtaining racially and ethnically diverse cord blood units to ensure that any individual seeking a stem cell transplant has a greater likelihood of finding a suitable HLA matched cord blood unit to help in the treatment of their disease.