Dr. Joy Kong explains why umbilical cord stem cells are actually younger than the newborn they come from. The cells get trapped in the cord during formation and stay in an embryonic state, keeping markers that disappear in the baby's own stem cells. This makes them more potent for treating age-related and disease-related decline.
people with autoimmune conditions or other type of chronic illnesses, or even just normal aging, their stem cells have declined in quality. And the umbilical cord stem cells is not just day 1 or day 0 when the baby's born. It's not the age of the baby. It's younger than the newborn because when the umbilical cord was forming, these cells were trapped in the cord and they stayed in that more primitive state. That's why they have surface markers that are consistent with embryonic stem cells that are no longer present in the baby stem cells. So these are actually earlier and younger and more potent than the baby stem cells.
