British Tycoon Sets Up Umbilical Bank

British entrepreneur Richard Branson said Thursday he is setting up a nonprofit blood bank to allow parents to store stem cells from their children's umbilical cords.

The airline, mobile phone and media magnate, head of the Virgin Group, said he hoped the Virgin Health Bank would eventually store up to 300,000 umbilical cord blood samples.

Branson said he came up with the idea after being approached by Britain's national blood bank for help boosting the number of umbilical blood samples.

The blood bank said ''there were quite a lot of children dying in Britain unnecessarily because there was not enough cord blood stored,'' Branson told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Getting Britain's public health service to accept private money proved difficult, he said.

''So what we've decided to do is set up a company that can get out there and increase the number of samples dramatically,'' he said.

Branson said any money generated by the bank would be donated to charitable organizations to further research into cord blood stem cells.

A growing number of parents bank their children's cord blood as a form of biological insurance against future serious illness. Other companies already offer similar services in Britain, the United States and other countries.

Under Branson's plan, parents wishing to store their children's umbilical stem cells would have to pay $2,940 to put the cord blood into a freezer for 20 years and about half the blood would be made publicly available.

In the United States, companies charge an initial fee ranging from $1,000 to $2,000, to collect the blood and additional storage fees that range from $100 to $150 a year.

Last fall, the U.S. government began a $79 million effort to create a national banking system for umbilical cord blood. The aim is to stockpile 150,000 donated units, enough that 90 percent of patients who need the blood could find a genetically compatible match.

At the same time, the American Academy of Pediatrics estimates the chances of a child needing cord blood at between one in 1,000 and one in 200,000. The doctors group also notes the risk that the blood could carry the disease already being treated.

Umbilical cords are usually discarded after childbirth, but stem cells can be extracted from the blood. The cells, kept in cold storage, can later be used to help regenerate tissue such as bone marrow, making the cells particularly important for treating blood cancers and diseases like leukemia and sickle cell anemia.

Because the cells come from the recipient, there is no wait for a donor and theoretically no risk of rejection.

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On the Net:

Virgin Health Bank, www.virginhealthbank.com