Storing Stem Cells and Cash

Sometimes you could say that the California stem cell agency is in the business of hope.

That's a core engine behind the drive for embryonic stem cell research. Another is profit.

But hope propels other research and business as well.

Reporter Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times wrote today about private tissue banks, including the case of one man who expects to pay $6,000 to harvest his own stem cells and pay a Southern California firm $400 a year to store them. She wrote,

"NeoStem, the company that he has chosen to store his stem cells, has launched a $2.5-million plan to expand its services across the country in the next year. It joins a private tissue-banking industry that already includes more than two dozen companies storing the stem cell-rich blood of the umbilical cord harvested at the time of a baby's birth, one other bank storing stem cells from circulating blood, and an 8-month-old bank that draws and stores stem cells from the soft pulp of children's baby teeth."