In October 2016, an AABB cord blood article titled “Family Cord Blood Banks Adapt to the Changing Business Landscape” was released by contributing writer Laura Fusco.
Throughout the article, BioInformant was honored to have our quotes included to support and explain the current business landscape for family cord blood banks.
Below is the introduction to the recent AABB cord blood article:
“The industry has matured a lot. There was a relatively strong growth period ten to fifteen years ago, but during the past five years, the market has matured and consolidated,” said Cade Hildreth, President and CEO of BioInformant.com, a stem cell market research firm. “The growth of the North American market has really leveled off. It’s not a bad thing though; the surviving participants are strong, generally well capitalized, and storing larger quantities of cord blood units under more standardized conditions.”
Other contributing quotes from BioInformant within the AABB cord blood article include:
In addition to tissue services, some cord blood banks are now offering banking for adipose-derived cells, placenta-derived stem cells and menstrual-derived stem cells. “With multiple income sources, the banks can distribute the cost per client across multiple services, and everyone gets more value for the money,” Hildreth said. “The lab equipment and expertise needed to store various stem cell types are similar, so there is a trend toward cord blood banks evolving into diversified stem cell biobanks.”
Hildreth also noted that all stem cell types are stored for the same purpose—use in regenerative medicine—but as biobanks, the businesses become positioned to benefit from progress with one stem cell type, while simultaneously protecting themselves against scientific or clinical issues that could arise with other cell types.”
According to Hildreth, “BioInformant has identified the trend of cord tissue storage as a rapid growth area, because only nine American cord blood banks offered the service in 2013, while the majority of U.S. cord blood banks offer it today. Cord tissue is a promising source of mesenchymal stem cells [MSCs], which are currently being explored in nearly 500 clinical trials worldwide.”
Finally, BioInformant contributed quotes about recent cord blood industry acquisitions, including AMAG Pharmaceuticals acquisition of CBR for $700M:
The largest revenue expansion in the industry was in August 2015, when AMAG Pharmaceuticals paid $700 million to acquire Cord Blood Registry (CBR), one of the largest cord blood banks, by units banked, in the world. Another large acquisition of a cord blood bank by a large multinational company was PerkinElmer Inc.’s acquisition of ViaCell, Inc. for $300 million in 2007. “In my opinion, the earlier acquisition was a model for the latest one, because both companies were bought for exactly 5.55 times revenue,” Hildreth commented.
“The acquisition of CBR by AMAG pharmaceuticals was a strategic move to bolster its portfolio of existing maternal health products,” said Hildreth. “CBR brought with it an established network for communicating with expectant and recently pregnant women, as well as a trained sales team serving obstetricians, hospitals and labor and delivery units across the U.S. These assets helped AMAG Pharmaceuticals expand its reach within maternal health markets.”
“PerkinElmer, as a diagnostics company, was similarly motivated when it acquired ViaCord. They have a newborn genetic screening test that they sell independently or in tandem with cord blood banking,” Hildreth said. “The pattern is there with both companies— overlapping opportunities for value creation exist when cord blood banking is paired with other prenatal, neonatal and maternal health services.”