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Almost 300,000 families, mostly Hungarians, have participated in an operation called “the largest stem cell transfer in history”, which covers nothing more than the fact that umbilical cord blood previously stored at the bankrupt Cryo-Save it is now stored in Europe’s largest stem cell bank, the FamiCord Group. Interested parties should contact the company, as this is not possible in reverse due to EU data protection regulations.
The approximately 800,000 stem cell samples obtained from the umbilical cord blood of children from approximately 300,000 Hungarian families by 2019 on behalf of Cryo-Save Kft. They are currently kept in Warsaw. This company was one of the stem cell banks operating in Hungary until early last year, when the parent company, the Swiss company Cryo-Save AG, went bankrupt.
We analyze the situation of Cryo-Save and the international group of companies that supports it. The parent company has been on a downtrend for a long time, struggling financially, trying to get rid of the stem cell business. Apparently, the Hungarian company was not paid. The story is eerily similar to the case of Sejtbank Kft., Which also disappeared.
Nothing is guaranteed to be lost
Although the Swiss court will not declare bankruptcy until September 2019, Cryo-Save will sign a so-called security agreement with the world’s fifth-largest stem cell bank, the FamiCord Group, starting in February. The latter will then transport the samples in Cryo-Save from Belgium, Switzerland and Germany to the central laboratory in Warsaw, and in July this year also those that were temporarily kept in Portugal.
In other words, all umbilical cord blood stem cells previously entrusted to Cryo-Save are now in Poland.
– Zsuzsanna Takács, CEO of Kryo Institute Zrt., Shared the news that could be reassuring for many stakeholders. Despite the similar name, this Hungarian family business has no connection to bankrupt Swiss and Hungarian companies. On the other hand, it is a member of the FamiCord Group, which, incidentally, provides a very safe and solid track record, as it is a listed company with a track record of 18 years. This is also important because, as Zsuzsanna Takács put it to our question, there is no guarantee that a case like Cryo-Save will not happen to another stem cell bank, especially that
Stem cell storage has been a commitment for decades.
The “security agreement” is therefore, as we have learned, standard practice in the stem cell banking market, much less what Cryo-Save did without informing its customers about it.
Each donor will have a job now
The problem is that due to GDPR, that is, EU data protection regulations, FamiCord does not have the opportunity to do so, so in a very specific way, the families involved have now been asked to get in contact with FamiCord through the Kryo Institute. This is necessary for a number of reasons. The contract for the storage of the stem cell must be renewed / rewritten, in relation to which Zsuzsanna Takács emphasized: it is carried out according to the above parameters,
During the renegotiation, clients have no additional payment obligations.
Also, detailed data reconciliation is needed to determine if everyone has all the samples.
Although they received an electronic record of the samples from Cryo-Save, it was quite inaccurate, as Zsuzsanna Takács indicates. Therefore, each sample was inventoried individually: with one hundred laboratories, the process lasted months, there was never one similar in the world. The resulting database is already being cleaned up, but even that takes months and it is essential to contact customers.
Furthermore, families should also think that if they have already spent hundreds of thousands of guilders on stem cell storage (currently the cheapest package costs 99,000 guilders to freeze + 23,000 guilders per year for storage), they should not let it go to waste. as it may be required at any time.
As we learned from Zsuzsanna Takács, only 3 thousand patients, including 4 Hungarian children, have been treated for hematological or oncological diseases and other diseases in recent years with the samples kept only in the FamiCord group. and all over the world
Umbilical cord blood has been used more than 40,000 times in the last 30 years.
in transplants. In Hungary, since the early 2000s, it is possible to take a stem cell at birth and then store it. The first stem cell bank was inaugurated in 2004 and currently 4 companies offer these services.
Cover image: AFP Photographer: Wojtek Radwanski
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