Besides expanding collections, the government will fund the development of an information center for cord blood donations. The center will allow doctors to make one phone call to find the best match for a patient, regardless of where in the country the blood is stored. That money was awarded last month to the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis.

Also, the Medical College of Wisconsin won a contract worth more than $6 million to analyze the outcomes of blood stem cell transplants.

“For us to understand how good cord blood is compared to marrow, we need to have a central data base that collects data on every one, every marrow recipient, every cord blood recipient,” Wagner said. “This will allow us to really understand how well cord blood works for every individual type of disease, for every different population of patients.”

Wagner, who served on the medical team that performed the first cord blood transplant in the world for a leukemia patient, said scientists are just now learning about the potential benefits of cord blood stem cells.

So far, only about 8,000 cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide, he estimated, but that number is growing quickly. Scientists are also learning new ways to use the cord blood stem cells. For instance, doctors are combining cord blood units to allow for the treatment of adults. Primarily, cord blood transplants have been reserved for children because the amount of stem cells in a single donation isn’t enough to help an adult, he said.

Also, scientists are moving beyond using cord blood merely as a way to rescue the bone marrow. Wagner said that scientists have isolated cord blood stem cells that can kill leukemia. Now, they’re testing those cells in the treatment of other diseases, such as diabetes and lupus.

“We now find all these novel uses that are just now being explored,” Wagner said. “It will take more time for us to prove how effective they are, but there are very unusual types of cells in cord blood that make us particularly excited about it as a new source of cells for many more types of therapy than we ever imagined in the past.”

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