Cord blood, which is extracted painlessly from the umbilical cord after a new birth, can be used as a substitute for marrow to treat a series of life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma and some cancers, through transplants, said Maria Spencer, director of legislative relations for the National Marrow Donor Program, which oversees a national registry of marrow donors and stored cord-blood units.
The blood has been proven to treat nine diseases, and scientists are experimenting with using the transplants for up to 70 afflictions overall, Portantino said.
While doctors must find close genetic matches between donors and recipients during marrow transplants, cord blood has proven to be more versatile and easier to match with subjects of the same ethnic background as the family that donated the blood, Spencer said.
A boost in collections of the more applicable cord blood could help in treating people of minority backgrounds, especially since those patients typically struggle to find a match in the national registry because it has disproportionately small listings of non-Caucasian donors, she said.
“Perhaps it would be someone of Armenian descent that would have more of a challenge of finding a match, even though they’re a Caucasian, but that’s why you would want to have more supply in the registry,” Spencer said, later adding, “It’s really going to be able to provide additional hope to a lot more people who are searching patients because the more cord blood we are able to collect, there is more likelihood that someone will be able to find a match.”
The legislation, Assembly Bill 52, would push the state’s fee for obtaining a birth certificate from $7 to $9, which would generate about $3 million annually, according to committee analysis.
