About Virgin Health Bank

Only Virgin Health Bank offers you the choice of dual banking - storing your baby's cord blood stem cells both privately and publicly - so potentially helping to protect your own family, as well as others.

At Virgin Health Bank, the cord blood stem cells are divided into two units and stored cryogenically (at an extremely low temperature). We can do this because in practice cell expansion technology is likely to be required to provide a usable number of cells for regenerative medicine regardless of how many are in the original unit collected.

One part will be held in our private bank, for the sole use of you and your family. The chance of your child needing his or her own cord blood for any childhood condition (known as autologous transplantation) is extremely small. This unit will, however, provide you with a source of stem cells that could be used for regenerative medicine in the future

The other unit will be placed in our public bank. This is where we expect people to benefit most, because the vast majority of transplants are carried out using cells from another person (allogeneic transplant). By contributing to the public bank as well as storing cells privately, you're helping to increase the number of stem cell units and the likelihood of a matched unit for you, your family and others.

It's important to remember that the promise of regenerative medicine is not here today, but we – and, more importantly, many expert scientists and doctors – passionately believe in its potential. That's why Richard Branson has made a personal commitment that all future proceeds from Virgin Health Bank to the Virgin Group will be donated to initiatives that are helping to fully realise the potential of cord blood stem cells.

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