Newborn Stem Cell Banking: a Gift that Keeps On Giving
There is no greater gift for parents than the birth of their child. Nothing can create the same sense of hope and optimism that comes from meeting your newborn for the first time. That is why, according to Samuel Kim, “you give your child everything that you could possibly give as a parent”. Samuel Kim is the father of Hope Biosciences’ first newborn banker, Chloe. Following Chloe’s birth, her stem cells were isolated from the placenta and grown to create a master cell bank accessible to Chloe should she ever need them. As Samuel puts it, “[A master cell bank] is that one additional thing that you could ensure for yourselves and for your daughter or your son when they’re born”. Peace of mind is one of the most rare and valuable gifts that parents receive when they ensure the future wellness of their newborn with Hope Bio. Unlike with cord blood or tissue bankers, Chloe and her parents can rest assured that her stem cells are safely preserved and available for many therapies in the future if need be.
Continue reading for our full interview with Chloe’s parents to delve into their experience in finding trust with Hope Bio.
Interview with Samuel Kim: the father of Hope Bio’s first newborn banker
“My name is Samuel Kim, and this is my beautiful wife Olivia, and this is our daughter, Chloe Kim. We are originally native Texans, but we recently moved to the Bay Area, but it’s just always great to come back and visit Hope Bio and see Donna, as well. Just a little bit about us: I am a technology attorney in Silicon Valley, and, you know, as first time parents, we had a lot of nervous anxieties about how to prepare ourselves.
When it came to Chloe, we thought of everything you could think of as first time parents. There were a lot of nerves, obviously … we thought about how to raise her to be a good person … lots of wish lists, obviously. And as a control person myself, I made an excel sheet with regards to how I wanted to raise Chloe. [Ensured wellness was] one of the things that obviously we wanted to prepare her for in life and one of the ways that we thought about that [was stem cells]. We had never thought about [it before]. We were at the hospital; there were pamphlets and brochures and all these discussions around stem cells and so we obviously looked more into it.
We wanted to prepare her for everything. The future is unknown. There’s so many things that a parent can do. Obviously provide for her, and give her the best life that you possibly can as a parent, but there are other uncertainties in life. And so, in order for us to prepare for that, we looked into and researched stem cells. That was a really easy decision for us. It was something that came naturally without any questions. Obviously, this area of science is relatively new for an attorney—there’s a lot of unknowns, right? There are a lot of questions. That’s when we did our research and we came to Hope Bio. We found a lot of answers.
We were looking at banking stem cells, and we knew that with adults, you could bank an unlimited quantity of stem cells, but we weren’t sure if this could be done for newborns. So when we looked around, we found Hope Bio and we asked. Other banks said they possibly wouldn’t be able to, Hope Bio was the first to look into it and said that they could, after doing their research; and, that’s something that I really respect—because of the fact that Hope Bio was willing to do the research, was willing to be at the forefront of this and they just seemed to know exactly what was going on with regards to how it should properly be done. So I think with that in mind it wasn’t a very difficult decision to explore additional opportunities with Hope Bio because of the fact that they are at the forefront, on the cutting edge of all this really impressive research that they’re doing at their lab.
It’s like home insurance. I think for us, it’s also the fact that there are so many un