Virgin Health Bank in Qatar.

VHB QSTP was initially launched in the UK in February 2007 as a joint venture between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Excalibur (formerly Merlin Biosciences), the private equity house of Professor Sir Christopher Evans OBE, one of Europe's leading biotechnology entrepreneurs.

Internationally, Virgin companies have a long established track record of creating commercial success by redefining the customer experience and focusing on meeting their needs. VHB QSTP is no exception to this philosophy.

The vision is to exploit VHB QSTP's knowledge of cord blood stem cell processing and storage, benefit from the global reach of the Virgin brand, and to build an international base as part of one of the world's leading centres for scientific and technological development.

VHB will develop new, sustainable Middle Eastern and European markets for the cord blood stem cell collection sector and support the realisation of the benefits of today's stem cell therapies and those still to be developed.

VHB QSTP is uniquely positioned to exploit these opportunities and will initially focus on developments within Qatar before establishing a market-leading position in the Middle East and Europe in this exciting and strategically important sector of the life sciences market.