LifeCell, India's first family cord blood bank, has announced the launch of its marketing and collection centre in Gurgaon, for umbilical cord stem cell banking. LifeCell has a state-of-the-art stem cell processing and banking facility near Chennai conforming to the standards of American Association of Blood Banks and US FDA. With this new launch, LifeCell has eleven marketing and collection centres in India - Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Kochi, Surat and Gurgaon. The company plans to expand its network of marketing and collection centers to 24 cities within next two years.

S Abhaya Kumar, CEO, LifeCell, said, "Cord blood which is discarded after child birth is a rich source of stem cells, which can be harvested and cryo preserved to be used for treating more than 75 serious ailments. LifeCell has been spreading the message of preserving this important biological material for family's own use."

According to Prasad Mangipudi, vice president - marketing, LifeCell, "Wherever we have launched, LifeCell has been received extremely well both by the medical fraternity and expectant parents. Today, we have 2000 enrolments and 1800 samples processed and stored. We are India's first and only stem cell banking company to be awarded ISO 9001:2000 Certification, within 6 months of launching the state-of-the-art banking facility near Chennai."

Over the past fifteen years, cord blood stem cells have increasingly been used to successfully treat over 75 diseases and over 6000 people have been successfully treated with this revolutionary therapy, world over. Majority of these diseases have been related to blood and immune system disorders, and researchers have been recently encouraged by cord blood's potential in other diseases, including neurological disorders and cardiac conditions.