Ilya was born in 2009 in the town of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, with congenital heart defects. However, thanks to surgeons and the newborn boy’s own umbilical cord blood, Ilya’s life was transformed.
In June 2015 I was diagnosed with Mixed Phenotype Acute Myloid Leukaemia. AML is one of the most aggressive forms of Leukaemia and goes from zero to 100% cancer cells in 4-8 weeks. I needed a course of intensive high strength chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant in 2015 to save my life. I underwent my transplant in October 2015 but first needed to find a stem cell donor match.
Facundo is a young boy from Argentina, whose parents had decided to bank his cord blood stem cells at birth after hearing about the service from a friend. Little did they know how life changing this decision would be for Facundo, when he developed cerebral palsy shortly after he was born.
Amelia Topa, a young toddler in the North East of England, will be home just in time for Christmas after receiving a pioneering stem cell transplant to treat a rare combination of cancers.
Here at Future Health Biobank, we speak to thousands of parents about the benefits of banking their child’s stem cells. The majority are considering the unique opportunity to collect and store their child’s cord blood stem cells at birth. Collection of stem cells from the umbilical cord is common in most countries globally, either publicly or privately.
