The prospect of the government management for cord blood in Korea -at the time of enactment of the 『Cord blood management and research act』

which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Perspective The prospect of the government management for cord blood in Korea-at the time of enactment of the 『Cord blood management and research act』 OVERVIEW Based on the study result that the cord blood contains hema-topoietic stem cells which are capable of regenerating blood cells, the first cord blood stem cell transplantation (CBSCT) was successfully performed at France in 1988. Since the first successful CBSCT was performed in 1998, more than 500 patients were treated with CBSCT in Korea (Table 1) [1]. Afterwards, cord blood was used in a variety of hemato-logic and oncologic diseases that can be cured by hema-topoietic stem cell transplantation, and cord blood banks were beginning to be established for cryopreservation of cord bloods that were otherwise discarded. Along with this movement, active studies on adult stem cell have arisen and the attention was focused on cord blood as an important source for cell therapy [2]. Public cord blood banks began to be established in order to utilize cord bloods that were once discarded, and these banks have been operated by fundings of the university hospitals, public organizations, and sponsorship organizations worldwide. Countries that are most representative in supporting such cord blood banks with national budgets are the United States (US) and Japan. The US government officially recognized cord blood bank project along with bone marrow bank project based on『Stem Cell Act-C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program』in 2005 [3]. They devised an independent budget for new cord blood bank project and secured 60 million dollars of national budget for the preservation of 150,000 units of cord blood. Also, in addition to the operation of hematopoietic stem cell related program that includes cord blood in association with National Marrow Donor Program, the US Health Resources & Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services supports budgets to cord blood banks by direct negotiations based on Stem Cell Act 2005. In Japan, more than 3 times the budget for organ transplan-tation project is being provided for the managements of bone marrow and cord blood. The budget for public cord blood banking project is used, in part, for the laboratory tests and processing of cord bloods for banking as well as networking business of Japan Cord Blood Bank Network via Japan Red Cross [4]. NetCord, a global cord blood …