Now, you can bank your stem cells for future use

Washington, June 13 : Some companies in the United States are offering people a chance to bank their stem cells for future use.

That way when treatments are available, there will be stem cells ready to go that came from the patient's own body, eliminating the issue of rejection of donor cells.

Meanwhile, the cells are presumably healthier, as they would have been collected from a younger, disease-free patient.

"With all these amazing advancements in the last few years, there will be stem cell therapies," Vin Singh, founder and CEO of Grand Forks, N.D.-based Next Healthcare, which offers stem cell banking, said.

According to a report from IBISWorld, stem cell banking was a 435-million-dollar business in 2012, Discovery News reported.

To bank the stem cells, a person visits a doctor's office, where tissue samples are taken.

Stem cells can theoretically come from anywhere, but usually a physician will take a small square of skin, a blood sample, a piece of fat via liposuction or even bone marrow.

Some companies offer to bank stem cells from children's teeth as they lose them, and many places offer banking blood from the umbilical cords of newborns.

The cells are sent to a facility where they are examined for any contamination or infection, and if nothing shows up they are put in cold storage.

When they are needed, the cells are taken out and cultured into the desired cell and used for the therapy.

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Now, you can bank your stem cells for future use