A sibling cord blood donor programme

The programme gives potential future hope to disadvantaged families with children suffering from leukaemia, aplastic and Fanconi’s anaemia, sickle-cell disease, thalassemia, or other diseases treatable with stem cell transplants.

The Netcells ‘Families of Hope’ CSI programme aims to help and improve poor and disadvantaged families’ access to stem cell banking if they have a child with a stem cell-treatable disease.

With a one in four chance that full biological siblings will be a genetic match, a stem cell transplant could potentially provide a cure.

This way, we hope to expand the opportunity to families who are faced with life-threatening diseases treatable with stem cells but cannot afford to save their baby’s precious stem cells at birth.

How the Netcells’ ‘Families of Hope’ programme works

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Disadvantaged child requires a bone marrow cells transplant

If a disadvantaged child requires a bone marrow stem cell transplant, and his/her mother is pregnant and expecting a full biological sibling (ie same father) Next Biosciences will facilitate the collection of the umbilical cord blood at the time of delivery. We'll then transport the umbilical cord blood to our laboratory to be processed, tested and stored.

If there is a suitable match

If these stem cells test positive for a suitable HLA-type match, upon request by the affected sibling's transplant physician, we'll transport the stem cells to the place of transplant within Southern Africa.

Next Biosciences commitment

Next Biosciences has committed to supporting one family for every 100 cord blood units that are privately banked.

Procedural fees

Gynaecologist who do cord blood collections for Netcells are also given the opportunity to donate their procedural fees to the programme, if they wish, increasing the number of families that could benefit. Any unused funds will be donated to the Childhood Cancer Foundation of South Africa (CHOC).