Frequently Asked Questions

Private cord blood banks store the umbilical cord blood for the donor’s own use. This provides the benefit of being a 100% genetic match for the donor, and a much better chance of being a suitable match should a sibling require the stem cells.

Public banks store donated umbilical cord blood, it is available for anyone around the world to use. This means that it may not be available for the donor’s use if required. At the present time public banks do not offer the opportunity to donate cord tissue. In the UK there is the NHS Cord Blood Bank and the Anthony Nolan Cord Blood Bank.

Private and public banks are not in competition for umbilical cord blood, it is the actual collection of the cord blood that is the limiting factor for the public banks in the UK. Although the number of hospitals in which you can donate your baby’s cord blood is growing there are still only a handful of hospitals that can collect cord blood.

Biovault Family use a specialist courier service, and make all necessary arrangements for you – all you need to do is notify us once the sample is ready for collection by the courier. We will then dispatch a dedicated driver to you, whose sole responsibility it is to collect the parcel containing your sample and facilitate the transportation of this parcel back to the laboratory. Our target transit time to get the sample back to our laboratory is 48 hours with 24 hours contingency.

The collection kit we provide includes a fully validated courier box for the return of the sample, which is made from high-tech thermally insulating material. This material ensures that the sample is kept at a suitable constant temperature throughout the duration of the transportation period, minimising cell damage from the moment the sample is packed into the box to its receipt at the laboratory for processing.

*Please note that courier service options may vary for international customers.

This is not a problem. If you ever need the cord stem cells for therapy, they will be shipped in a vessel that keeps them frozen for up to 5 days (this will cover transporting the cells to virtually anywhere in the world), so there will be no loss of viability. The cells are only thawed at the clinic where they will be used.

We take the responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of your child’s cord blood sample very seriously. When your sample is stored with Biovault Family, you can rest assured that it will be processed and cryopreserved as soon as possible after the birth of your baby, in order to maximise the sample’s viability for future use. If a section of the sample were to be transported to another location, this would be after the controlled freezing process – at a time when the sample is very delicate, and the risk of damage to the sample is high. Therefore, we believe that it is best to protect the sample within its allocated storage location, so that it’s safe & ready if you ever need it.

Biovault Family has made sure that we are prepared for any major incident by carrying out a comprehensive risk analysis to ensure that cord blood samples remain as secure as possible and that they remain unaffected by any adverse event. For this reason we have published a Business Continuity Plan which is also sometimes referred to as a Disaster Recovery Plan.

This is a fully comprehensive plan which looks at all known eventualities including power and gas outage, fire, floods, server break down and many more. We have made sure that we have contracts where necessary to ensure that we have companies that would support us during any difficult times. All single points of failure have been eliminated ensuring that processes are not affected by equipment failure. There is an onsite Uninterrupted Power Supply that in the event of a short term power failure will allow us to complete any critical processes. In the event of a long term power cut however, we are in a position to restore power within 4 hours using a mobile generator which we are able to connect directly to our power distribution boards.

All of our quality system, records, client and patient data is backed up locally and also securely backed up to a remote data recovery centre. This centre also provides us with work area recovery should our offices become inaccessible. This provides us with a quiet office space and access to all of our records almost instantly meaning we can calmly get on with running the business and keeping our clients informed of the situation.

All cryogenic vessels we utilise onsite are the latest design and are capable of running without supply for up to two weeks. The Liquid Nitrogen levels can be monitored manually, as can the filling meaning there is never any risk to the cord blood samples during a Power or Liquid Nitrogen Supply outage.
This is just a brief outline of the detail that has gone into our business continuity planning, however if you would like to know more, or have a specific question then please contact us and our customer care team would be happy to answer your query.

After you have had your 20 week scan. After this period the sooner you contact us the better to ensure that we have everything in place before your baby is born. You can call us or request through the website for us to call you.

When you go into labour, if you are using a healthcare professional arranged through us you or your partner will need to call the number we provide you with to inform us that you have gone into labour and are in hospital. You can then be assured that they will do the rest to ensure a successful collection.

Once we have successfully processed and stored the stem cells we will contact you to let you know everything is OK. Once all the test results have been reported we will contact you for the final payment and then send you your baby’s stem cell storage certificate.

We are required by the regulations in the UK to test the mother’s blood for HIV I & II, Hepatitis B & C, Syphilis and HTLV (human T lymphotrophic virus).

The mother, as the child’s guardian, has control over the stem cells, until the child is of legal age. Stem cells will not be released by Biovault without the mother’s consent or the child’s consent, once they reach legal age.

Biovault Family does not store whole blood, in line with the majority of public banks around the world it volume reduces the cord blood.

This is where Biovault Family is unique and stands out from other companies providing cord blood & cord tissue banking in the private sector.
We know that you are investing in the future of your baby’s and family’s health. This is a long term investment and you need to be sure that your investment is safe. Biovault Family has set up an Escrow Account with a separate company, where the money you pay for storage goes into an account which is held in trust by an independent third party ensuring that there are sufficient funds to carry on storing your stem cells whatever happens to us.

Simply call us and we can put you in touch with a phlebotomy company who can arrange to perform the collection for you.

We will send you an information pack that will contain everything you need to read, complete and return to us in order to join Biovault Family. Once you are entirely happy and we have received everything we will then take the first payment for the kit. We will then send you a collection kit for you to take with you to hospital when you go into labour, as soon as you sign up with us.

Along with the majority of stem cell cord banks (both public and private) Biovault volume reduces the stored samples – concentrating the sample by removing spare plasma and red blood cells by a centrifugation and isolation processes, and freezing only the nucleated cell population, included in which are the stem cells.

The red blood cells discarded are of no therapeutic benefit. If a cord blood sample is stored whole without removing the red blood cells the sample will have to be washed before it can be transplanted as the red blood cells will fragment during the freezing process and are then toxic if transplanted.

The washing process to remove the red blood cells will then cause a significant loss of the valuable stem cells, this is why public and private banks around the world volume reduce then freeze the cells. Plasma will contain some growth factors which help stem cells to survive and grow. These growth factors are produced constantly in much larger amounts by other cells in the body, such as those lining blood vessels and many are available as non-plasma derived manufactured products e.g. erythropoietin, and GCSF. The amount of erythropoietin and GCSF contained in the discarded plasma is therapeutically insignificant.

The plasma is discarded as there are no cells in it. Whilst plasma contains some useful proteins the volume of plasma from an average cord blood harvest is not a therapeutically relevant or useful volume.

Many plasma-derived proteins previously used to treat disease now have non blood product derived, manufactured alternatives e.g. the clotting factors 8 and 9 are now never obtained from plasma when used to treat haemophilia A and B. Some cord blood banks store cord blood samples whole , however in order to utilise any potential benefit from stored plasma the entire sample would need to be defrosted and processed thereby destroying the more valuable stem cells.

Cells which have the capacity to mature into tissues such as muscle, bone, skin and fat, and also play a role in mediating the body’s inflammatory response to damaged and injured cells.

MSCs have the potential to play a role in the treatment of disease and considerable research is focused towards their use in regenerative medicine and the treatment of disease such as heart disease, stroke, neurological conditions, autoimmune disease and injury. MSCs are found in cord blood, but cord tissue (Wharton’s jelly) has significantly more MSCs.

There is an ever expanding field of research devoted to discovering further cell types in the cord, and uses for them. Perhaps of most importance is that the tissue of the umbilical cord is a rich source of mesenchymal stem cells. Biovault offer to freeze both cord blood – for the haematopoietic stem cells, and whole cord tissue -to facilitate the future potential of MSCs. Scientists continue to research the best methods to extract and grow cord stem cells and so better techniques may be developed than are used currently.

MSCs are cells which contain a nucleus and therefore any MSCs present in the cord blood sample will be frozen with the haematopoietic stem cells and other mature white blood cells during the volume reduction process. However isolating and growing the MSC from cord blood would result in the loss of the haematopoietic stem cells.

This is where Biovault Family is unique and stands out from other companies providing cord blood & cord tissue banking in the private sector.

We know that you are investing in the future of your baby’s and family’s health. This is a long term investment and you need to be sure that your investment is safe. Biovault Family has set up an Escrow Account with an independent company, where the money you pay for storage goes into an account which is held in trust by an independent third party ensuring that there are sufficient funds to carry on storing your stem cells whatever happens to us.