FAQ

The decision to transfer the material was made by your cryo preservation provider. Your cryo preservation provider decided to entrust this service to our bank, due to the fact that FamiCord Group is regarded as the most reliable bank among European banks, their highest storage standards, and many years of very good financial standing.

FamiCord Group is, by all means, the largest stem cell bank in Europe and one of the largest in the world, storing around 500 thousand different stem cells specimen for nearly 385 thousand families, not counting samples transferred from your former cryopreservation provider. FamiCord Group is present directly or indirectly in: Albania, , Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Egypt, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania Serbia, Slovenia Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and Ukraine. The FamiCord Group’s 11 ultra-modern and specialized laboratories process over 37% of the umbilical blood portions collected annually in Europe. FamiCord Group has a robust financial background, the FamiCord Group parent company (PBKM) is controlled by German investment fund Active Ownership Capital.

FamiCord Group, the highest quality laboratory in Warsaw is one of the largest and modern in family stem cell banking sector worldwide and it holds accreditations of national and international authorities and many renowned institutions including the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Technischer Überwachungsverein (TUV).

If you would like to learn more about FamiCord Group, please check it out at https://famicordcryobank.ch/home.

We are not a party to contracts between you and your cryo preservation provider, therefore we are not able to provide the reason why the previous cryo preservation provider contacted the customers in the manner they actually did.

It is worth mentioning, that the transfer of the material to Poland was conducted under emergency cirmumstances and was supposed to ensure the continuity of the storage of the biological material.

FamiCord Group managed to save samples of your former cryopreservation provider ccustomers, but had no impact on its information policy. We as FamiCord Group assume that the right to information is one of the key rights of the client, so we try to reach the clients and inform about the situation.

In order to check whether your material is stored, you will have to provide information that will enable us to identify the material sample and at the same time verify your right to this biological material. Typically sample has been split into few subunits.

Please provide such data at https://famicordcryobank.ch/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/check-your-sample

When filling out the form, please note whether you provide data in the required format. To confirm that your form has arrived at FamiCord Group, you will receive an automatic return message to the e-mail address you provided.

Confirmation of the storage of all your samples in the FamiCord Group laboratory will be send as soon as possible. Usually it should take no more than one week from the date of filling form with rare exceptions explained below in text. If we only find at least one subunit belonging to a family this family will be promptly informed about it.

Please remember that under GDPR regulations, in order to inform you regarding stored samples we need your explicit consent – that is why, filling the provided form is important!

FamiCord Group manual check was done rack by rack and container by container. That was much more efficient than looking for all the samples belonging to a particular family. However at this point this first stage of verification is finished and most of the Parents received their confirmations. In conclusion, we are able to answer the families with much bigger confidence than a year ago as to whether and where their samples are stored.

Overall, we have checked the biological material located in 58 storage containers. It is important to mention that the biological material collected from one child could have been divided into up to 8 different cryopreserved parts (subunits). Each of those subunits could be of different type of package, size and located in different storage containers. Each sample had to be scanned and matched with the customers’ records in our database. All of that made our work extremely difficult and time consuming. It was the largest project of its kind in the world.

The manual verification was made, based on electronic data we have received from your former cryopreservation provider however the data were not complete and contained a lot of errors which should be corrected. For the Parents who are still waiting for the confirmation of their children’s biological material we have opened the next stage of verification, which will be focused on additional verification of the codes with our documentation or scanned versions of it. We estimate it can take another few months so we will be very grateful for your patience and understanding. We are doing our best to provide the Parents with reliable information regarding the biological material of their children.

That could happen when at the moment of placing the request by the Parent his sample was already found. Also, if the number of the agreement with your cryopreservation provider was not entered into the contact form in a correct format – there are spaces, dots or typos, our system will not be able to automatically match the contact details with the child’s information. Usually the correct format of the agreement number is: XXX/XX/XXXXX – where the middle section is the year of concluding a contract. The other reason the Parents might wait is that the electronic information we have received is not complete. That is why we have closed the first stage of verification and opened a second one, based on paper documentation. We feel fully responsible for providing you correct and true information. Therefore, we send confirmations as soon as we verify the location of the sample and not by the date of receipt of the request.

When filling in our contact forms you must enter the contract number – if you leave this field blank, the form will not be sent. However, if you don’t know the contract number, please type “I don’t know” and then include any additional details in the comment. The contract number contains very useful information which enables FamiCord’s specialists to verify whether the biological material is stored in FamiCord’s laboratory easier and quicker. However, the lack of the contract number does not limit your rights to the biological material. Such situation more effort both from yourself and our staff will be required to confirm your rights to the samples. In particular, we may request certain additional information or documents. To be able to do this – please remember to provide us with correct e-mail address. Nonetheless, we, as FamiCord Group – a company focused on meeting the needs of Parents and taking care of biological samples of your children, will do our best to identify your samples.

FamiCord Group has the most experience in Europe with the safe transport of stem cells to transplantation centres all over the world. It means that during the transfer, all the standards and requirements (technical, medical and legal) regarding biological material transport, are met.

So far we have sent several units transferred to our laboratory, for transplantation.

FamiCord Group will support Parents throughout the procedure and will be responsible for the release of the material to the clinic. During this process we will ask the Parents to send us a set of signed documents e.g. permission for conducting the tests on the reference sample and for sharing the documents with the transplant centre. After completing the formalities, our Medical Director gives permission to release the sample. FamiCord Group will organize the safe transport of samples to the clinic.

If Parents have signed a new agreement with FamiCord Group and they have also added the Transplant Assistance Package to the contract, we will not charge them. The only costs on the Parents/clinic side are the costs of the genetic compatibility test (HLA test) of the transplant recipient.

If the Parents did not conclude any contract with FamiCord Group before, we need to sign a special agreement for the release of the biological material, so we can have a legal base to follow the release procedures. Parents will be charged (at market rates) for the storage until the moment of signing a contract, testing and issuing the sample and also for the transport to the transplantation clinic. Of course when concluding this special release contract, Parents cannot purchase the Transplant Assistance Package anymore, therefore all the logistic costs are on their side.

If you need to use your biological material, please contact us as soon as possible, so we can assist you with the process and provide you with all the necessary support. Contact us on: info@famicordcryobank.ch or call us: https://famicordcryobank.ch/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/call-us

For each contract, samples of biological material are divided into subunits. Usually, the umbilical cord blood sample is divided into two subunits. If the Parents decided to store the umbilical cord, it is also often divided into two subunits. In our email storage confirmation sent by FamiCord Group we provide you with numbers of such subunits.

As far as we know not all Parents have received certificates from their former cryo preservation provider with sample numbers or have been certified only for cord blood or only for umbilical cord, therefore they may not recognize these numbers. For this reason we are now adding the former cryo preservation provider’s contract number to the confirmations we send.

That case may concern you if you have signed a stem cell storage agreement with companies:

In these cases, you should also complete our contact form: https://famicordcryobank.ch/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/check-your-sample to check whether your child’s samples have been transferred to the largest FamiCord Group laboratory in Warsaw.

By deciding to sign a contract with FamiCord Group, we guarantee that all storage payments made to your former cryo preservation provider will be honoured – which, in practice, means that you will not incur any costs until the prepayment period expires.

Execution of the contracts with FamiCord Group does not require termination of the contract between Parents/Child and your cryo preservation provider. It is discretionary decision of the parents what to do with their existing contract. Contracts create legal relations only between their parties, so execution of contract with FamiCord Group formally, does not affect existence of the contract with other entities and your rights arising from such a contract.

It is understandable that termination of the contract with your current cryo preservation provider prior to the execution of a contract with FamiCord Group may provide more clarity in the legal relations, but it is not necessary and in any way required by FamiCord Group.

We – as FamiCord Group, believe that the contract should be signed without undue delay, as it is necessary to properly secure the samples that are safely stored PBKM FamiCord high-tech Laboratory. We do not have the legal authority to store them for all the years for which the contract with your initial cryo preservation provider has been signed. Bear in mind, that liquidation of will necessitate decisions by the Client as to the exact manner of continued storage of the samples in accordance with all applicable standards.

FamiCord Group feels responsible for the stored samples since the moment of receipt from your cryo preservation provider’s laboratories.

To mutually regulate the relations between Parents and FamiCord Group, FamiCord Group proposes to conclude contract for storage in subscription model (clients pays less than 100 Euro per annum) or prepayment model (client will prepayment for desired amount of years). What is important, those payments will be due when period of storage for which the client already paid his/hers initial cryo preservation provider will be over. We do not expect any payments from Parents. What is more, until that time clients are free to do anything with their samples (including move to another bank). In such scenario no payments for storage will be due to FamiCord Group.

We believe this is a fair proposal for our clients.

Our primary objective was to help the company and its affected by the situation customers. If no action had been taken, clients samples could be at risk. FamiCord Group is a socially responsible company. We believe that it is our obligation to help families in need.

We have incurred additional costs (creating a dedicated multilanguage call center, manual inspection process, lawyers etc.) and we do made no profit by deciding to take care of samples, formerly stores across Europe.

FamiCord Group is a for-profit organization, therefore we would like to offer customers, whose samples have been transferred to the laboratory in Poland, our paid services. We also hope that in the future more Parents (Clients) will choose FamiCord Group as a trustworthy partner, knowing that we are a socially responsible company, operating on the highest medical and business standards.

Finally, as far as possible future benefits for FamiCord Group are concerned, we hope that Parents who have met us in this difficult situation as a responsible company will either choose us FamiCord Group to store their next children’s material or recommend it to their friends. And in such a scenario, FamiCord Group can potentially count on measurable future profit results, having been in a situation from which no short-term profit benefits derived.

For Parents who have become our customers, we intend to communicate openly – just like in the case of all other our clients.

In accordance with our procedures, an e-mail is sent one month before the first invoice is issued for the next billing period. Subsequently, further relevant invoices will be sent to customers, both by e-mail and successively placed on the Customer Panel.

At the same time, we would like to inform you, that we intend to send out information, concerning the end of prepayment period stated in your former cryo preservation contract.

However, please bear i/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/check-your-samplen mind that FamiCord Group complies with the European laws, in particular with the GDPR. Therefore, we will be able to contact you only upon providing us with your consent, which can be acquired by completing the form at our website: https://famicordcryobank.ch/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/check-your-sample

As long as your former cryopreservation provider is not liquidated and deleted from the Swiss commercial register, the samples will be safe in FamiCord Group laboratory. After that time the client should make a decision as to how and where the samples are to be stored.

The legislation does not provide an explicit procedure for dealing with “abandoned” biological material. Regulations, allowing e.g. to destroy such material are included in contracts between the cell bank and the customer. However, FamiCord Group has no right to invoke the provisions of such agreements when deciding on further handling of samples.

FamiCord Group is fully aware of how important biological material containing stem cells may be in the future. Until a new agreement is concluded or a decision is made on further handling of the samples (e.g. their destruction), there will be no contractual regulations concerning remuneration for storage of the samples. In such a situation, FamiCord Group will be obliged to comply with the request of the entitled person but it may require the client to reimburse the market costs of releasing samples and their securing and storing in FamiCord Group’s laboratory.

It must be also emphasized that in any case and in any time, FamiCord Group will comply with the applicable regulations of law and decisions of the official authorities concerning the storage of the biological material transferred to FamiCord Group laboratories.

The FamiCord Group stores samples, among others, in 12 laboratories located in 8 countries, such as Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Hungary and others. In the contract or by means of a separate statement, the customer will be able to indicate, where their samples are to be transferred, from the FamiCord Group laboratory in Warsaw for further storage. A fee for transferring biological material from the FamiCord Group laboratory in Warsaw to one of the laboratories that may be mentioned in the contract, will be indicated in the Price Table in the contract.

We strongly recommend to leave the material where it is currently stored – in Warsaw, Poland. For the time being, only around 5% of Parents made the choice to relocate their samples outside of Warsaw. FamiCord Group Central Laboratory in Warsaw, Poland is the largest and ultra-modern laboratory of the Group, which means that all restrictive safety and medical standards are met.

Customer service will be provided by FamiCord Group, another entity from the capital group or a subcontractor, so the customer will have the opportunity to contact the provider in their native language, if possible. The customer who enters into a contract with FamiCord Group will always be informed about the customer service entity and will receive the relevant contact data of such an entity. Our customer service is based in various European countries.

We would like to inform, that FamiCord Group hotline is open for you from Monday to Friday 9:00 – 16:00 CET in the following languages:

  Bulgaria (Bulgarian and English) +48 221 230 299

 Germany (German and English) +49 34122389 994

 Hungary (Hungarian and English) +36 14453973

 Italy (Italian and English) +39 0289735043

 Netherlands (Dutch, German, English) +49 34122389994

 Serbia (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and English) +38 1114250189

 Spain (Spanish and English) +34 937370283

 Switzerland (Italian, German, French and English) +41 315087679

 Poland (Polish and English) +48 224364050 IVR: 1,4

You can contact us also by e-mail at: info@famicordcryobank.ch

FamiCord Group will respect payments already made by customers to their former cryo preservation provider’s account. Payments for a storage period of up to 20 years will be accepted without proof of payment. If the pre-paid period is longer than 20 years, FamiCord Group may ask Parents to provide proof of payment, but there is no need to do that immediately. If the necessity arises after the conclusion of the contract, we will contact the Parents regarding this matter.

If the customer concludes a contract with FamiCord Group, all payments for the storage of the biological material made to your initial cryo preservation provider will be fully recognized by FamiCord Group and the Customer will be required to pay another fee only after the end of the already prepaid period.

For instance, in the that case somebody made a contract with cryo preservation provider in 2007 for 20 years, we will store the samples free of charge until 2027. Payments for a storage period up to 20 years will be accepted without proof of payment. If the pre-paid period has been longer than 20 years, FamiCord Group may ask the Parents to provide a proof of payment, but there is no need to send it to us immediately. If the necessity arises after the conclusion of the contract, we will contact the Parents regarding this matter.

As indicated above, FamiCord Group accepts all payments for the storage of biological material without asking for proof of payment (for storage periods up to 20 years).

Without access to former cryo preservation provider’s billing records, i.e. payment details and invoices, we assume in each case, that the contract period has been paid in full. In any case that, if payments to your initial cryo preservation provider have not been made in full, they are owe to their former cryo provider. We treat any payments referred to in clients contracts as having been made in full.

We will be able to provide you with a new Certificate after signing the contract for storage with us, provided that the biological material of your child has been transferred from your initial preservation provider to FamiCord Group. We will send you the Certificate by email after conclusion of the contract, along with confirmation of storage of all subunits.

We have already issued thousands of new certificates for customers who have decided to sign a contract with FamiCord Group.

The operation to transfer the newly collected biological material to Biosckin took place under a prior agreement between your former cryo preservation provider and Biosckin in order to ensure adequate preparation and continuity of storage under the required conditions, which your former cryo preservation provider was unable to guarantee at this stage of activity.

Most of samples stored at Biosckin are the samples of customers whose children were born in 2019 and beyond. They were transported to Biosckin because the your former cryo preservation provider laboratory was already closed and the preparation of biological material by the laboratory had to be started immediately in order to avoid the loss of the material. The safety of the biological material was in this situation a priority over the obligation to provide information to Parents, as it determined the quality of the collected stem cells.

Biosckin, Molecular and Cell Therapies, S.A. is a health biotechnology company whose main activity is the cryopreservation of stem cells from cord blood and cord tissue developed in its specifically created laboratory in 2006.

Biosckin’s laboratory is authorized by the Directorate General of Health and specializes in the analysis, processing, cryopreservation, storage and distribution of stem cells from umbilical cord blood and cord tissue, complying with all legal and quality requirements applicable to this activity, namely Law No. 12/2009 of March 26 and Netcord recommendations.

Owner of a Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) nucleus, named BioMat&Cell, Biosckin is also dedicated to the development and research of cellular products aiming their use in Regenerative Medicine/Tissue Engineering, in association with biomaterials. The company is currently certified by ISO 9001 and NP4457.

The operation to transfer the newly collected biological material to Biosckin took place under a prior agreement between your former cryo preservation provider and Biosckin in order to ensure adequate preparation and continuity of storage under the required conditions, which your former cryo preservation provider, Switzerland was unable to guarantee at this stage.

At the beginning of 2019, containers with the biological material of about 98% of its customers were safely transported from local facilities to the biggest of the FamiCord Group laboratory located in Warsaw, Poland. However, a small part of the biological material was stored in Biosckin, mostly belonging to the customers whose samples were collected after the last transfer of the containers to Warsaw in June 2019.

In order to help these customers, we as FamiCord Group was negotiating with Biosckin which resulted in an agreement that enabled the transfer of great part of client samples from Biosckin under FamiCord Group control to Warsaw in May 2020.

We ensure that during the transfer, which was supervised by a group of experts, all the medical and safety standards and requirements for the transportation of biological material were observed. We would like to also assure you that during the transfer operation all the standards and requirements (technical, medical and legal) regarding biological material transport were met. Cryogenic containers were equipped with special sensors to measure temperature.

In order to check whether your biological material is stored by FamiCord Group in Warsaw, you will have to provide information that will enable us to identify the material sample and at the same time verify your right to this biological material.

Please provide such data at https://famicordcryobank.ch/contact-for-clients-of-the-former-service-provider/check-your-sample

Great part of the stem cell bank with registered office in Pfäffikon, Switzerland samples that were transported to Biosckin are samples of customers whose children were born in 2019. They were transported there because the laboratories of their cryo preservation provider were already closed and the preparation by the laboratory had to be started immediately in order to avoid losing the material.

The samples in question could not be included in the transports to FamiCord Group, because the biological material of the children born starting from May 2019 went directly to Biosckin to be processed and freezed by the laboratory and stored properly.

We always act with the best of our knowledge. At the time FamiCord Group had no knowledge regarding exactly which ones and how many samples are in Biosckin possession. We only had information that they might be stored as a part of the biological material of cryo preservation provider’s clients, especially from children born in 2019 in Portugal.

FamiCord Group negotiated with Biosckin to obtain information on the remaining samples. The resulting agreement allowed the transfer of most samples under FamiCord Group control.

FamiCord Group is responsible for the biological material from the moment in which it was received from the Biosckin’s laboratory. For obvious reasons FamiCord Group cannot be held liable for the quality of the sample, its preparation and storage before this reception; however, there are no reasons to consider that Biosckin could prepare and store the biological material improperly. Biosckin’s and stem cell bank with registered office in Pfäffikon, Switzerland’s laboratories hold all the necessary accreditations and met all the medical and safety standards to store the biological material.

The only person who owns the biological material is the Child (and the persons who represent the child until he or she reaches the age of majority, usually his or her Parents). Thus, only the Child and the Parents are entitled to dispose of the samples.

Our priority is to ensure the safety and proper medical storage conditions of stem cell bank with registered office in Pfäffikon, Switzerland customer samples because we know how difficult the situation is for Parents and we want to ensure that they can trust our 18 years of experience in the professional long-term storage of biological material.

FamiCord Group is the biggest stem cell bank in Europe. We store over 450 000 samples. It is not possible to make it for every client to visually inspect his sample – for example for security or organizational reasons. Only authorized specialists have access to the warehouse.

A few months ago, we exceptionally agreed to organize several visits, which was attended by representatives of various social groups, i.e. doctors, researchers, journalists. We have already finished this stage for safety reasons.

FamiCord Group is a reliable, trustworthy partner. We want to ensure that you can trust our 18 years of experience in the professional long-term storage of biological material. We are the largest private family stem cell bank in Europe. We have been operating since 2002 with proven track of successes within Europe. The financial statement published yearly by FamiCord Group proves the very healthy and sound situation of the company. The Group is controlled by German entity Active Ownership Capital. Among shareholders are trusted financial institutions such as Nationale Nederlanden, Invesco, Oil Fund of Norway, Esaliens, etc.

The fact that we have decided to store samples of stem cell bank with registered office in Pfäffikon, Switzerland clients also proves FamiCord Group’s social responsibility towards Parents. By storage of stem cell bank with registered office in Pfäffikon, Switzerland samples FamiCord Group expressed its willingness to take care of the samples transferred to Poland in the best professional, medical and legally approved way to secure both parties: Parents and FamiCord Group.

We ensure that during the transfers, which were supervised by a group of experts, all the standards and requirements (technical, medical and legal) for the safe transportation of biological material were observed. Cryogenic containers were equipped with special sensors to measure temperature. Any opening of container for checking the samples was filmed. Additionally, all transfers were covered by FamiCord‘s Group insurance policy provided by a group of insurance companies. Whole transfer process was planned very precisely and with details with logistic specialists. We did not notice any of adverse events during the transport. Since the transfer was completed, the biological material is stored under strict controlled conditions in FamiCord laboratories.

Since the transfer was completed, the biological material is stored under strict controlled conditions in FamiCord laboratories.

Along with the samples, FamiCord Group has also received the database which includes partial information regarding Clients. Among these data are also contract and sample numbers. The contract number and the sample numbers are individual designations ascribed solely to one contract and one sample. In our opinion such data is fully sufficient to confirm that the given biological material belongs to your child.

Furthermore, there have already had cases in which we had to release the biological material transferred to our laboratory for medical treatments and the samples in fact belonged to the patients and there were no objections to their quality.

FamiCord Group is responsible for the biological material from the moment in which it was received from your former cryo preservation provider. For obvious reasons FamiCord Group cannot be held liable for the quality of the sample, its preparation and storage before this reception; however, there are no reasons to consider that your former cryo preservation providers could prepare and store the biological material improperly as their laboratories had all the necessary accreditations and met all the highest standards to store the biological material. We shall underline however we have identified visible quality issues with 0,3% of checked sub-units.