Future Health Biobank

Future Health Biobank, is celebrating 10 years as a pioneer in the collection and cryopreservation of stem cells for potential future medical use with the news that it is opening a second laboratory in Switzerland to complement its established UK facility. The company, which is headquartered in Nottingham in the UK, was established to process and store cord blood stem cell samples for families in 2002 at a time when the idea of stem cell medicine was still more likely to be read about in science fiction books than in our daily newspapers and magazines. Future Health started by storing cord blood stem cells in 2003 and within four years it had stored its 10,000th sample. Another five years on and the company's purpose built cryogenic storage facility has over 50,000 stem cell samples for families from more than 50 countries in its care. A cord tissue storage service was added in 2009 and now services to capture stem cells from other sources identified for potential medical use have been introduced. Future Health have also put time and resources into research. In the last four years the company have invested in a number of important study areas which could have an impact on the future effectiveness and use of stem cells in medical treatments. These include finding the optimum cryopreservation methods which maintain stem cell viability and investigations into stem cell expansion technologies.