Attended the launch of Cordlife the other day the UP Ayala Technohub in Quezon City. It’s the Philippines’ first cord blood processing and cryopreservation facility, where clients can have their baby’s umbilical cordblood containing stem cells stored for later use. Cord blood stem cells can help treat more than 80 diseases such as lymphoma and leukemia. Amazing.

CordLife was established in May 2001 as the first private cord blood bank in Singapore and among the first in Asia. CordLife collects, processes and stores cord blood stem cells, which may later become potential source material for life-saving treatments.

Headquartered in Singapore, CordLife owns the largest network of private cord blood banks with facilities in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, China and the latest facility in the Philippines. It also has marketing offices in Macau and Thailand. CordLife is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the symbol, CBB.

As of December 2009, over 25,000 families have entrusted their baby’s cord blood stem cells with CordLife Group.

In the CordLife laboratory at the UP-Ayala Technohub, they can house up to 20,000 cord blood samples. Here the laboratory technician prepares the cord blood for processing.

Cord blood can be collected from the umbilical cord which is usually thrown away following the delivery of the baby. It does not interfere with or obstruct the birthing procedure, and pose no risk to mother or child.

The blood bag is CordLife’s preferred method of cord blood collection, as this method has been proven to provide a simple and straight forward system, while drastically reducing the chance of contamination.

A CordLife qualified representative will retrieve the child’s collected cord blood after birth for processing and cryopreservation at CordLife’s facility

The first transplant using umbilical cord blood was in 1998 for a boy with Fanconi’s Anemia. Since then, approximately 14,000 cord blood transplants have been performed for over 80 different diseases. These transplants are done for the same indications as bone marrow transplants, however with cord blood as an alternative source of stem cells.

The processed cord blood passes through the pass box, directly into the cryopreservation laboratory for freezing down and preservation. The laboratory is equipped with controlled rate freezers that freeze the cord blood unit down gradually, preventing any damage.

The temperature for cryopreservation is kept at below -165°C. The tanks are directly attached to liquid nitrogen supply tanks that automatically top-up liquid nitrogen as needed.

Today there are over 160 private cord blood banks worldwide that cryogenically preserve newborn babies’ cord blood stem cells for parents in case the need arises in the future.

CordLife Medical Philippines, Inc.: Unit 101, Building H, U.P.-AyalaLand Technohub, Commonwealth Ave, Diliman, Quezon City, 1101 Philippines

Guess what I did two weekends ago? Endured a seven-hour ride to La Union up north. We arrived at midnight and even if it was pitch black, the sound of waves was unmistakable. I woke up and saw the waves.

Met with half-Aussie half-Filipino world-champion surfer Luke Landrigan at the San Juan Surf Resort in San Juan, La Union.

The story comes out in Entrepreneur’s March issue. Damn, a few more days and February is over. That was fast.

I’ve been so busy the past week that I completely forgot that my very first contributing writing job for FHM has been out for two weeks already. There is no greater thrill than opening an FHM magazine and seeing your name attached to an article, albeit short, and tame. It’s a definitely a start. I regret them not giving me a story that was more, how should I say it, scandalous.

Still, if I ever find myself shaking hands with someone I am to interview who has the capacity to breastfeed an army of babies with her mammary glands (note my use of politically-correct terms), at the back of my mind will be the scenario of my parents banishing me from home. So right now, I’m thinking of a unique pen name.

Photo to follow.

It’s every child’s dream to jump into a pool of foam. I didn’t get to do it, but the experience I had was close enough.

Together with other people from the press, I was recently invited to visit the 60,00 square-meter factory of Uratex in Muntinlupa City. Uratex is the leading foam manufacturer in the Philippines. They started making foam in 1968 and have since grown and expanded. Today, Uratex’s world-class foam products—from really comfortable mattresses and pillows, to kitchen sponges and car seats—have permeated almost every Filipino home and have thus become a successful local brand.

The plant tour was especially interesting as they showed us how they made foam. It was, in a word, magic.

This is their research and development department. I know this because they’re wearing stereotypical pristine white lab coats. Here they formulate the specific foam mixtures to create specific foam products. I never thought foam was this complicated.

Here they burn the foam to test its flammability (or lack thereof). It’s important because a burning bed or pillow in your house is simply unacceptable. In another station they pull foam apart to test its strength. One girl’s job is to bounce a metal ball all day to test the foam’s “bounciness.” They’re serious about their foam.

After getting the perfect foam formula, they proceed to create the foam. And it all starts out in liquid form. The Hennecke–the foam-making machine they imported from Germany–is the source of everything. Streams of chemicals are sprayed using computer controlled metering pumps on a paper-covered conveyor belt. The smell is awesome, like permanent marker and candy.

As the belt and the paper move along the length of the machine, the liquid spreads and forms into a thin layer. Through an exothermic process, the less than one centimeter of liquid slowly rises as it goes through the machine. And this is the magic part–in less than two minutes all that turns into this…

A warm block of foam about a meter high emerges at the end of the line. It’s already safe to touch, but on the surface it’s still a bit moist.

The foam is then cut into 30-meter blocks for easy handling. At this point the outside of the foam block is already dry, but the inside is still warm and wet. The foam, i mean.

A giant crane then picks up the 30-meter block of foam and lays it down in a warehouse for curing. The foam block sits there for 24 hours until it cools down. After that they proceed to cutting the foam into the specific product it was designed to be. It can become a mattress,  a piece of kitchen sponge, or even the 1mm foam disk you see inside a hard drive. Uratex makes those as well.

Foam! They make bra padding too. So the next time you see a bra, imagine that a worker at Uratex had, at one point, his hands all over your underwear.

My week has been hell: three long stories to finish and the deadline was last week. I’m a rebel. But really, one can never be too busy for YouTube. Awesome ad.

I’ve been doing a fro-yo story for an upcoming issue. Tried them all in a span of two weeks. If you want something sweet that still has that tart yogurt flavor, I’d recommend The White Hat. Plus, it’s a local company.

On Saturday, February 13, 2010, the Ateneo Blue Eagles will team-up with AHON (Acts of Hope for the Nation) Foundation and The White Hat–Italian Frozen Yogurt to show their love towards Filipino public school students. Together, they will raise as much money as they can by selling & serving authentic Italian frozen yogurt at The White Hat’s Shangrila store. TWH has pledged to donate half of the entire day’s sales to AHON Foundation who, in turn will use the money to build more libraries for public schools to raise literacy rates among the poor.

According to AHON Foundation, more than 90% of our students currently study in public schools, but only 10% of the 37,000 public schools have adequate libraries. This is then the mission of AHON, to inspire future leaders of our country by making sure they are literate. AHON has already helped build 30 libraries, the latest one in Pateros (Sto. Rosario Elementary School) which luckily escaped the wrath of typhoon Ondoy.

On the other hand, the Ateneo Blue Eagles have generously agreed to volunteer themselves as guest celebrities in The White Hat’s Celebrity-For-Charity event whereby customers get served the best-tasting frozen yogurt by celebrities. To make the event even more fun, customers who buy yogurt on this day can have souvenir photos taken and even ask the Blue Eagles to autograph memorabilia on the spot.

They must have loved that plane very much.