For a time, cord blood banker Cryo-Cell International and its partner Duke University seemed to be flying high together on the hope of using cord blood for pediatric neurological conditions. Yet in the past few months, the partnership has all come crashing down. Now, the deal with Duke is dead, and Cryo-Cell says it’s suffered more than $100 million in damages.
I saw their collaborative plan as questionable from the start.
We’re not talking about the proven, FDA-approved uses of cord blood for immune system reconstitution after chemotherapy. Instead, it appears that the goal was to eventually market cord blood infusions to families of children with autism spectrum disorder and other neurological conditions like cerebral palsy at planned Cryo-Cell infusion clinics. This approach of cord cells for autism, favored by some unproven stem cell clinics, was a relatively new direction at Duke.
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