New Council to Unify and Revitalize Public Cord Blood Banking

SEATTLE, WA – January 20, 2026 – A new nonprofit, the Cord Blood Council (CBC), has launched in Seattle with an ambitious mission: to modernize and unify the nation’s public cord blood banking system, a critical but strained component of modern medicine. The organization aims to provide shared resources and strategic coordination for the federally supported, FDA-licensed banks that collect, store, and provide life-saving umbilical cord blood for transplants and cutting-edge research.

By coordinating expertise, infrastructure, and data, the CBC intends to strengthen the operational performance of these banks, expand patient access to high-quality cord blood units, and accelerate the use of this vital resource in both established transplant medicine and emerging cell and gene therapies.

“Cord blood has been a cornerstone of life-saving transplant medicine for decades, and its potential in next generation therapies is only growing,” said Christina Melief, Ph.D., a philanthropist, cord blood champion, and the organization’s Co-Founder, President, and CEO. “The Cord Blood Council brings together the tools, data, and collaboration needed to help public banks thrive and to ensure patients and researchers have access to the highest quality cellular starting material. This is about strengthening the entire system so innovation can move faster and reach more people.”

A System Under Strain

The launch of the Cord Blood Council comes at a pivotal time for public cord blood banking. While cord blood is rich in stem cells and serves as a crucial alternative to bone marrow for treating leukemias, lymphomas, and other diseases, the system that provides it faces significant headwinds. Public banks, which rely on altruistic donations, are grappling with immense financial and operational challenges that threaten their long-term viability.

Operational costs are a primary concern. The process to collect, test, process, and cryopreserve a single cord blood unit for public storage costs between $2,000 and $4,000. These costs are compounded by high discard rates; research indicates that between 70% and 80% of collected units are ultimately discarded because they fail to meet the stringent criteria for cell count or volume. This inefficiency is exacerbated by limited collection infrastructure, with fewer than 200 U.S. hospitals participating in public donation programs, meaning the vast majority of umbilical cords are discarded as medical waste.

Furthermore, the regulatory pathway is uniquely burdensome. Public banks must secure a Biologics License Application (BLA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a rigorous and expensive process that can create significant financial strain. This licensure is not retroactive, meaning older inventory collected before approval often cannot be used for standard transplants, creating further logistical and utilization hurdles. Compounding these issues is a stagnant demand for cord blood transplants in some regions, partly due to competition from other stem cell sources like haploidentical (half-matched) bone marrow transplants.

Unifying a Fragmented Lifeline

The Cord Blood Council aims to directly confront these inefficiencies by functioning as a centralized capacity-building resource. The organization’s work will span business practices, process optimization, inventory research, marketing, and shared data analytics. The goal is to eliminate the duplication of effort and inconsistent standards that currently exist among the nation's independent public banks.

By creating shared tools and standardizing best practices, the CBC intends to help banks lower their operational costs, improve the quality of their collections, and manage their inventories more strategically. This collaborative model is designed to create a more cohesive and resilient national network.

Leading this charge is Dr. Melief, whose career has been dedicated to this exact mission. Her extensive experience includes serving as Executive Director of the National Cord Blood Network and as a senior scientific advisor at the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match. At NMDP, she chaired the Cord Blood Bank Alliance, an initiative that provided a single point of access to the domestic cord blood inventory for therapy developers, giving her deep insight into the need for a unified system.

Beyond Transplants: Fueling Future Therapies

While shoring up the existing transplant system is a primary goal, the Cord Blood Council has its sights set firmly on the future of medicine. The organization plans to accelerate the use of cord blood as a critical starting material for the rapidly growing field of cell and gene therapy. These next-generation treatments, which can be engineered to fight cancer or correct genetic disorders, require a reliable supply of high-quality, well-characterized cells.

By improving product performance research and generating shared evidence, the CBC can make the public cord blood inventory a more attractive and accessible resource for biotech companies and academic researchers. A standardized, high-quality inventory can streamline the path to FDA approval for new therapies, positioning public banks as key partners in the innovation ecosystem.

This effort also directly addresses one of the most significant challenges in transplantation: diversity. Patients of mixed or minority ethnic backgrounds have a much lower probability of finding a suitable bone marrow match. A larger, more genetically diverse public cord blood inventory offers them a greater chance of finding a life-saving unit. A nationally coordinated effort, guided by strategic forecasting and shared data, is better positioned to target collections in diverse communities and close this critical equity gap.

Charting a Path to Sustainability

Ultimately, the CBC's mission is to build a sustainable economic model for a public health necessity. The strategy is twofold: reduce costs through efficiency and increase revenue through utilization. By optimizing workflows and sharing resources, the council aims to make each bank's operations more financially sound. Simultaneously, by expanding access and facilitating use in both transplants and research, it helps generate the revenue needed to sustain the system. The average cost of a cord blood unit for transplant is approximately $40,000, making every successful match a significant source of income for the providing bank.

As a nonprofit, the Cord Blood Council will likely operate on a mix of philanthropic contributions, government and private grants, and potential service partnerships. The organization's launch represents a strategic shift from a fragmented, grant-dependent model to a collaborative, business-minded approach to managing a national resource.

With its national scope and collaborative framework, the CBC is calling on partners across the transplant and cell therapy ecosystem—from public banks and transplant centers to researchers and therapy developers—to help shape the next era of cord blood innovation.