September 2026

When a rare snowstorm hit Southern California in January 2023, ten-year-old Isaac Hopkins ran out into it with no jacket and no fear of what came next. For most kids, that's unremarkable. For a boy who spent years living with sickle cell disease, it was proof of how far he'd come. This Sickle Cell Awareness Month, Curtis and Shaundell Hopkins share how their younger son Nathan's banked cord blood, stored while Shaundell was pregnant with the hope it could one day help Isaac, gave him a cure and a second childhood.

The U.S. House has passed H.R. 5160, which would extend federal funding for the National Cord Blood Inventory and bone marrow transplant programs through fiscal year 2031. We break down what the bill would do, where it stands in the Senate, and how it relates to the broader, and separate, decision families face between public and private cord blood banking, plus where the research on cord blood's uses stands today.