Petrini Carlo
Italian National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy.
J Blood Med. 2014 Jun 18;5:87-97. doi: 10.2147/JBM.S64090. eCollection 2014.
The procedures for collecting voluntarily and freely donated umbilical cord blood (UCB) units and processing them for use in transplants are extremely costly, and the capital flows thus generated form part of an increasingly pervasive global bioeconomy. To place the issue in perspective, this article first examines the different types of UCB biobank, the organization of international registries of public UCB biobanks, the optimal size of national inventories, and the possibility of obtaining commercial products from donated units. The fees generally applied for the acquisition of UCB units for transplantation are then discussed, and some considerations are proposed regarding the social and ethical implications raised by the international network for the importation and exportation of UCB, with a particular emphasis on the globalized bioeconomy of UCB and its commerciality or lack thereof.
自愿且免费捐赠脐带血单位并将其处理用于移植的程序成本极高，由此产生的资金流动构成了日益普遍的全球生物经济的一部分。为全面看待这个问题，本文首先考察了不同类型的脐带血生物样本库、公共脐带血生物样本库国际登记处的组织架构、国家库存的最佳规模，以及从捐赠单位获取商业产品的可能性。接着讨论了用于获取移植用脐带血单位的一般费用，并就脐带血进出口国际网络引发的社会和伦理问题提出了一些思考，特别强调了脐带血的全球化生物经济及其商业化与否。
