Contextual factors influencing donor recruitment and cord blood collection: perspectives of frontline staff of the Canadian Blood Services' Cord Blood Bank

Ethical challenges of cord blood banks: a scoping review

Cord blood is a rich source of hematopoietic stem cells used to treat many diseases of blood origin. Thus, storage banks were created to store and provide umbilical cord cells. With the development of diagnostic and therapeutic technologies and techniques in medicine, ethical issues have also become more widespread and complex. After the creation of the cord blood banks, efforts were made to address the ethical issues associated with such banks. The present study attempts to identify the ethical challenges in these banks in the published studies. Databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science (WOS), Embase, Proquest, and Google Scholar were searched from January 1996 to January 2021. Then, the ethical challenges of the cord blood bank were extracted from the results section using thematic content analysis. 22 studies were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The ethical challenges raised in the studies included private or public ownership of the bank, fair access to banking services, informed and voluntary consent, failure to provide sufficient information to individuals about the process, confidentiality of user's information, conflict of interest of bank founders (who are commonly doctors). The findings of this study indicated that there are serious ethical concerns regarding umbilical cord blood banks. Responding clearly to these ethical challenges calls for the attention of policymakers and medical ethics professionals; this will require a clear statement of the various aspects of these banks for society.

Prospects for the therapeutic development of umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is a primitive and abundant source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). UCB-derived MSCs have a broad and efficient therapeutic capacity to treat various diseases and disorders. Despite the high latent self-renewal and differentiation capacity of these cells, the safety, efficacy, and yield of MSCs expanded for ex vivo clinical applications remains a concern. However, immunomodulatory effects have emerged in various disease models, exhibiting specific mechanisms of action, such as cell migration and homing, angiogenesis, anti-apoptosis, proliferation, anti-cancer, anti-fibrosis, anti-inflammation and tissue regeneration. Herein, we review the current literature pertaining to the UCB-derived MSC application as potential treatment strategies, and discuss the concerns regarding the safety and mass production issues in future applications.