This looks super promising—curious how you’re thinking about managing abstraction vs flexibility. A lot of ‘AI app builders’ oversimplify to the point where power users hit walls fast. What’s your philosophy on letting users customize logic, data structure, or chaining tools (e.g., plugging in external APIs or managing state)? If you’re aiming for devs or power users, this could be a big differentiator.
A doula told me that she saw this happen in the US once too. It's not legal, but I think there are legal loopholes around it. Another OBGYN told me it's more common in Europe
I would actually argue that the chances of using it are actually much higher & it would make the top 1000 options in terms of expected ROI. Using type 1 diabetes as an example:
By age 18, approximately 1/300 people in the US develop type 1 diabetes
and that's just for diabetes. Consider the chances and corresponding research around cerebral palsy, hair loss, heart failure, liver disease, cancers, and more that stem cells - and specifically cord blood stem cells - have been successfully used for.
There was some research that indicated stem cells can be made from skin cells. Is there a chance this field will eventually catch up by the time stem cell therapies become more widely accesssible?
Yes, it makes sense without a predisposition. Things like HIV with the woman cited in the article, cerebral palsy due to a near drowning accident, etc. could all be use cases. Our own team has a sales exec who used stem cells for a knee injury he got in track & field in high school. Another has a grandfather who used it for dementia.
BTW, a lot of our clients self identify as having <75k in income. Our pricing is 35-85/mo. for 8 years to cover 20 years of storage. :D so hopefully you don't need to allocate too much disposable income. It's still an investment for sure, but many think it's worth it. Myself included obviously haha
I think freezing for future use is the best way to go. A few reasons:
1) cord blood transplants from related donors have higher survival rates than unrelated donors https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602
2) this woman was lucky that she was able to find a partial match, but many don't. The combination of using a related blood donor + an unrelated cord blood donor was a lucky strike. I think for many very mixed race folks or especially people of color (specifically Black communities), they may not be so lucky
3) the cost of finding a donor can be extremely steep. Some may be covered by insurance, but not all of it will be. My guess is this woman who was cured from HIV is relatively affluent to some degree. Banking cord blood is considered to be for affluent folks, but the difference in cost of banking vs. finding a donor later on is massive
there isn't any evidence that delaying cord clamping for longer than 60 seconds gives the baby more benefits than delaying cord clamping for 30-60 seconds
I feel like someone whose business is freezing cord blood should probably cite some sources when discussing guidelines for delayed cord clamping, which reduces the amount of blood left in the umbilical cord. Honestly, I don't know much about it and you could very well be right, but it seems like a conflict of interest.
In a perfect world, I think everyone has access to their own stem cells as opposed to sifting thru donor pool.
Donating is definitely awesome, but there's a lot of research surrounding how cord blood transplantation from related donors (or yourself) increases your chance of survival from a stem cell transplant vs. using an unrelated donor. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602 - there's a chance of rejection. This woman found a partial match, but she was lucky. I assume she's only 2 races or a common mix i.e. half white, half something else
Finding a match later on can also be much more expensive than keeping your own!
It's better to donate to a public bank. According to the AAP the child itself is almost certainly not going to be able to benefit from their own stem cells because whatever disease you're trying to treat them for is most likely already present in the stem cells. It can be used to treat siblings though. But overall the advice is to donate to a public bank unless you already have a child with a medical condition in your family that could benefit from cord blood from their sibling.
I've done this with my wisdom teeth when they needed to come out. I used this company: ndpl.net. There were a few competitors but it's been years since I looked into it. My stem cells are sitting in a lab, frozen, awaiting my command to send them anywhere in the world for medical treatment.
I still have some wisdom teeth way up and back. They were too far back to conveniently remove. Do they still have fetal stem-cells in them that can be harvested, if need be?
From what I've read, there's a tradeoff with time prior to removal however. The earlier in your life you take them out and freeze them, the higher their regeneration factor is. The DPSC (Dental Pulp Stem Cells) should always be there as long as the tooth is alive.
We're expecting a baby, and in hospital waiting rooms we've been approached by a few different companies hawking cord-blood storage (in Singapore).
After some brief research I concluded it was probably a waste of money for us as donors, but it's probably valuable to donate for someone else. I haven't yet asked our obstetrician whether that's an option.
with companies like mine haha AnjaHealth.com - we send parents a kit, they can collect, we pick it up and bring it to a lab, and parents can access it later in life
Clients sign an agreement stating that it is their property. We shift the management of this property to another company in the case that anything happens. All samples remain in our lab, unless specifically requested otherwise. We have a legal obligation to turn over client relationship management elsewhere.
Can you answer this question: In the case of business failure, will customers lose their existing 20 years they paid for and have to pay the new management company all over again?
