hi hi,
I'm a silent reader most of the time. Just wanna contribute what I know about storing of cord blood from the questions I asked Stemcord recently.
Found out that they measure how effective the collection has been based on the volume of the cord blood collected and the count of the stem cells. I understand from the Stemcord representative that the average stem cell count is from 400,000 - 600,000 although there has been cases of cell counts of up to 1,000,000. If the cell count is 200,000 and below, it's not considered a successful collection and the mother is allowed to pull out from the programme.
The count of stem cells is very important cos it will determine how effective treatment is when it is later used for the child. The Stemcord representative said that in general, it is about 100,000 cell counts to 10kg in a persons weight. So assuming, they only collected 500,000 cell counts, it can only be used to treat a person of up to 50kg.
There is ongoing research on replication of stem cells but it's still not finalized. Also, heard from the rep that research was only carried out on stem cells of up to 15 years of age cos the researcher stopped his research after that. Beyond that, she cannot guarantee that the stem cells will still be usable. However, they will still continue to store it as long as you are willing to pay the annual fees.