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Cord Blood Registry Exceeds Growth Forecast for Second Quarter

R&D Investment Strategy Drives Operating Efficiencies and Delivers Highest Quality Stem Cells for Use in Regenerative Medicine

SAN BRUNO, Calif. – August 13, 2008 – Cord Blood Registry (CBR), the global leader in umbilical cord blood banking, announced today that for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, the company achieved a 32 percent increase in revenue compared to the same quarter in 2007. In addition, cash reserves grew 33 percent during the first six months of 2008, an increase of 96 percent year-over-year.

“We are extremely proud of our business growth and ongoing financial strength,” said Tom Moore, chief executive officer of CBR. “Even in the face of a slowing economy, CBR continues to outpace the industry in number of client enrollments and resulting revenue. Based on current projections, we anticipate our pace of growth will further accelerate in the second half of the year.”

Not a Commodity Business: Strategic Investments Differentiate CBR
Since 1999, CBR has maintained positive cash flow from operations and directed those funds to expand business development and improve operations. In the last four years, CBR has invested more than $20 million in developing incremental innovations, including significant enhancements to state-of-the-art technologies to broaden the company’s client relationship management system and optimize the company’s proprietary system of stem cell collection, processing and storage, called CellAdvantage®

Published data has shown that CBR’s CellAdvantage system – which uses the AXP AutoXpress™ Platform automated processing technology – delivers the highest recovery rate of mononuclear cells, the cells that are critical for a successful transplant. In addition, studies have correlated survival rates and improved outcomes with the number of stem cells used in therapy.

Higher cord blood collections and better cell recovery rates also open the possibility for multiple uses of cord blood stem cells. One area of particular interest is the use of cord blood stem cell in multiple therapies classified as “regenerative medicine,” a term that applies to the medical use of stem cells to repair damaged or injured tissue in the body. For more than 40 years, stem cells have been used to regenerate blood and immune cells following the use of chemotherapy to treat life-threatening blood disorders and cancers. Today, research is increasingly focusing on the use of a child’s own cord blood stem cells to regenerate other types of tissue in the body, including brain and nerve cells aimed at treating brain damage and spinal cord injury to pancreatic cells, directed to produce insulin for type I diabetics.

“Since our inception, CBR has been the industry pioneer and scientific innovator,” said Moore. “Our current investment strategy has ensured that we deliver the highest quality cord blood product in the industry. This is important because we expect that medical therapies using stem cells from the umbilical cord will increasingly become the treatment of choice in regenerative medicine.”

CBR has released 22 cord blood units this year for medical use. Twenty of these units, or 90 percent, have been used by the child from whom they were collected for regenerative therapies. Seventeen units were used to treat children with cerebral palsy or other forms of brain injury and three for children with type I diabetes.

About Cord Blood Registry
Cord Blood Registry® (CBR®) is the world's largest cord blood stem cell processing and cryopreservation service and provides families guaranteed access to genetically-related stem cells that are viable for medical use. CBR was the first family bank accredited by AABB (formerly the American Association of Blood Banks) and is the most recommended cord blood bank by obstetricians. To date, CBR has processed and stored cord blood collections for more than 230,000 newborns throughout the world and has released more than 82 client cord blood units for specific therapeutic use – more than any other family cord blood bank. The company's research and development efforts are focused on helping the world's leading researchers advance regenerative medical therapies using cord blood stem cells as well as continuing to introduce industry-leading technical innovations for stem cell collection, processing and storage that optimize quality and cell yield. Additionally, CBR facilitates collection of donated samples, available for research programs worldwide that are focused on stem cell expansion and other cord blood stem cell-based therapies. For more information about CBR, visit www.cordblood.com.

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