Peter Houghton, a lorry driver from Preston, is understandably excited about the establishment of Kingscord, a new UK centre for storing discarded umbilical cords and placenta, which are packed with precious stem cells. Why? Because his baby son's life was saved by the umbilical cord of a baby in Australia, whose parents opted to donate it to a cord blood bank after the birth of their child, in the hope that it would one day provide someone with a life-saving stem-cell transplant, more commonly known as a bone-marrow transplant.

Houghton's son Harvey was born in December 2006. He and his wife Laura were overjoyed, but their happiness was shattered seven months later when doctors discovered that Harvey had a rare metabolic disorder called Type I Hurler syndrome. His body lacked an enzyme that plays a crucial role in metabolism, resulting in an accumulation of toxic products in his organs and tissues.

Despite 30 sessions of enzyme-replacement treatment, his parents were told that Harvey would need a bone-marrow transplant to replace the abnormal cells that were causing his disease. None of his family was a match. Hope arrived via the Anthony Nolan Trust, the charity for people with leukaemia and other rare disorders, and eventually the donor in Australia with a 99.9 per cent match was found. The donation of cord blood - blood from the umbilical cord and placenta after a baby is born which is rich in stem cells - had been made in 1998 and kept in cold storage, and the transplant was successfully carried out last January.

The bone marrow is the site of production for all of the body's blood cells. These blood cells are made in the bone marrow from stem cells. In some diseases, such as leukaemia, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and, as in Harvey's case, rare genetic disorders, the stem cells of the bone marrow cannot make normal blood cells and a bone-marrow transplant is required. In conventional transplants, stem cells are removed from a healthy donor and then either injected or transfused into the patient. These healthy stem cells replace the faulty ones and the patient is then able to make normal blood cells. In umbilical cord blood transplants, the stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta, which may have been stored for many years, are injected into the patient.

A lifeline for transplant patients

Now Britain is about to open Kingscord, its largest cord blood bank. The pioneering scheme has been set up at King's College Hospital in London and will officially open next month. It will be run by the Anthony Nolan Trust, which believes that the bank will provide a lifeline to those in need of a bone-marrow transplant, and could save up to 400 lives a year. “We get around 1,400 requests from UK patients a year for bone-marrow transplants, but we are only able to find a match for around 400 to 500, so the rest don't get one. So about five years ago we decided that we needed to build up a cord blood bank to give us a greater potential for finding matches,” says Steve McKewan, the trust's chief executive.

Researchers discovered in the 1980s that blood stem cells were ideal for transplanting to leukaemia patients, whose immune system has been damaged by chemotherapy. During the 1990s, the NHS set up its own cord blood bank. It operates at selected hospitals around the country, but focuses mainly on gathering donations from ethnic minorities because there is a shortage of potential matches in these groups. But the process is expensive. By collecting donations on one site, with its own laboratory and storage facilities already established, the Anthony Nolan Trust will be able to minimise costs.

In the Kingscord scheme, women who have their babies delivered at King's are asked if they are willing to donate cord blood from the placenta and umbilical cord. These are normally thrown away after the birth, but in the case of donor mothers the umbilical cord is clamped and cut to preserve the cord blood. The placenta, or “afterbirth”, is delivered several minutes later. They normally contain about one third to one half of a cup of blood, which is rich in stem cells. The blood is then collected using a special needle, which is connected to a sterile bag. The procedure takes a few minutes.

The trust has the biggest register of bone-marrow donors in the world, with almost 390,000 people. Last year it helped 663 patients to receive potentially life-saving bone-marrow transplants. Of these transplants, 54 patients received cord blood through the use of 70 cord blood units imported from abroad. Although some countries have their own cord blood banks, these are not extensive and donations are often used by patients in those countries, making a match more difficult.

Although there are some private cord blood banks, including one run by the Virgin Healthbank, they are expensive, with parents being charged £1,500 for a donation to be stored. Under the Anthony Nolan Trust's scheme, mothers are not charged and will have a good chance of finding a match later if one is needed.However, making use of these donations is not straightforward because the project will have to collect about 50,000 donations to get 20,000 usable units, as not all cord blood contains stem cells.

Ghulam Mufti, Professor of Haemato-oncology at King's, says that the blood bank will be a tremendous resource. “We need something like 100,000 stem cells [one unit] per one kilogram of body weight for each transplant, and because many cord blood donations are rich in stem cells, this gives us what we need,” he says.

Safety is paramount

Although there are no known risks of taking cord blood, the safety of the mother and child is paramount, and the midwife's attention needs to be focused on them. Consequently, one of the main worries about cord blood banking is that the health of the mother and baby could be put at risk during the collection.

Teri Duffy, the cord blood co-ordinator for the Kingscord scheme, has developed a training package for midwives who want to become involved in taking cord blood donations. “We want to extend the scheme to maternity units with more than 4,500 births a year. Most midwives are very keen to take part, but we need to ensure that it is done safely, without any risk to the mother and baby,” she says.

The trust is hoping to roll out the scheme to ten other hospitals around the country, but it cannot be offered to all pregnant women as it would be too costly and logistically impractical.

Professor Mufti said that the scheme would also help doctors to collect donations from ethic minority groups. “The number of donors from [these] groups is very small and, because of our mixed inner-city population here, we will be able to obtain many more donations from these groups,” he says.

About half of all the units collected will be suitable for transplant. The remaining blood will either be disposed of or used in vital research. By analysing blood nutrients and comparing them with other donations, scientists are also hoping to use the cord blood to investigate the causes of leukaemia and other diseases.

As the father of a son who was saved by an umbilical cord donation, Houghton is wholly behind the Kingscord programme. “It's a brilliant idea, as it will mean that bone marrow, or stem cell, transplants will be available from donors in the UK, which would make finding a match quicker, and easier,” he says.

Anthony Nolan Trust: anthonynolan.org.uk

NHS Cord Blood Bank: http://cord.blood.co.uk

ANALYSIS - BENEFITS OUTWEIGH THE CONCERNS

NIGEL HAWKES Health Editor of The Times

There are two types of cord blood banks in the UK: public, such as the new Kingscord scheme; and private. Private cord blood banking has been sold with the promise that it might save your baby's life. Your baby's umbilical cord, rich in stem cells and usually discarded after the birth, is stored instead.

Should the baby ever require a stem-cell transplant, more commonly known as a bone-marrow transplant, these cells will provide a lifeline and bypass the process of finding a suitable donor.

However, relatively few people ever develop the diseases, such as leukaemia, that can be cured by a transplant of stem cells from the cord blood. So private banks, where samples are preserved for the exclusive use of the donor, are likely to be a waste of time and money for almost all depositors.

Public banks, on the other hand, where donations are made available to anybody, have huge potential. Sir Richard Branson's company Virgin has devised a bank that tries to combine both, by sharing samples between private and public stores.

There have been anxieties, still not fully allayed, that collecting cord blood could compromise the health of the mother and baby by distracting the attention of midwives at a key moment of birth. There have even been cases where husbands have been involved in the collection.

That has been addressed by new rules from the Human Tissue Authority that lay down standards for cord blood collection.

Transplants in numbers

24,000 the number of people diagnosed in the UK each year with leukaemia

8,000 the number to date of cord blood transfusions performed worldwide

1988 First successful cord blood transplant

40%-70% the success rate of transplants

30% the proportion of transplant patients who will find a matching donor from within their own family

Source: Anthony Nolan Trust

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