The House of Representatives today overwhelmingly adopted legislation authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) to establish, for the first time ever, a nationwide cord blood stem cell transplantation system. 

    “One of the best kept secrets in America today is that umbilical cord blood stem cells and adult stem cells are curing people of a myriad of terrible conditions and diseases,” said Smith who has been pushing for a federal cord blood program for the last three years. “One of the greatest hopes that I have is that these current day miracles, denied to many because of an insufficient inventory and inefficient means of matching cord blood stem cells with patients, will now become available to tens of thousands of patients as a direct result of H.R. 2520, ” Smith said. 

    Smith’s bill, The Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act, H.R. 2520, authorizes $79 million in federal funding to launch a cord blood inventory and research system, and it provides $158 million for the reauthorization and expansion of the ongoing federal bone marrow transplant program. The bill also brings cord blood and bone marrow stem cell data under a new program to provide an easy, single access point for information for doctors and patients, and for the purpose of collecting and analyzing outcomes data. 

    “Cord Blood Stem Cells are already treating patients.” Smith said. “The New York Blood Center alone has treated thousands of patients with more than 65 diseases including Sickle Cell Disease, Leukemia, and Osteopetrosis,” he said. “This bill will systematically turn medical waste – umbilical cords and placenta – into medical miracles for huge numbers of very sick and terminally ill patients, who suffer from such maladies as leukemia and sickle cell anemia.”

    Smith said the bill’s goal of creating a total inventory of 150,000 cord blood units will ensure that more than 90% of patients who could be treated or cured through stem cell transplantation are able to get the assistance they need. The bill also focuses on expanding the inventory for genetic diversity. 

    “In promoting this idea of a national network of cord blood banks, we have all learned how important cord blood transplant availability is to the African American community, specifically in the area of sickle cell disease which adversely affects one out of every 500 African Americans,” said Smith.