As someone who had skin cancer as an infant and thus has a greater chance of developing cancer in the future and as someone who watched her great-grandfather suffer from the effects of Alzheimer's and her grandmother from diabetes, I'm always interested when the news or other sources announce that there has been a new advancement in stem cell research. My hope is that scientists will be able to use stem cells to cure such diseases before they affect me. That's why I couldn't help but learn more about C’elle, a company that allows women to collect and store the stem cells found in their menstrual blood, when I first heard about it last year.Not to get too scientific on you--I am lawyer and not a scientist after all--but the stem cells found in a woman's menstrual blood are similar in some aspects to the stem cells found in bone marrow and in embryos. The menstrual stem cells multiply rapidly--on average, once every 24 hours--and can differentiate into several different types of cells, including bone, cartilage, muscle, heart, and fat cells. These characteristics may potentially allow the menstrual stem cells to replace diseased or damaged cells located elsewhere in the human body when injected or otherwise placed into those areas.
If you take a look at C'elle's Order Now page, you can get an idea of how the cells are collected. A woman uses a silicone menstrual cap to collect samples of her menstrual blood during her period. She then transfers that sample to two test tubes and mails the tubes back to C'elle's lab, Cryo-Cell. Cryo-Cell will process the blood and test it for diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis before transferring it to C'elle's cryogenic storage units. The woman will then be required to pay a regular fee for storing her samples.
As indicated by C'elle's Pricing page, the company is currently running a limited-time promotion on its services. If new customers use the code CN200, they can get $200 off C'elle's regular first year processing and storing fee, which is normally $699. Storage after the first year is $99 per year. The price is worth the assurance that, should you or a family member need the benefits of stems cells somewhere down the road, your own viable stem cells will be ready and waiting for you.
