FACT - Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy

The foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy or FACT is a nonprofit organization that is committed to voluntary inspection and Accreditation in the subject area of hematopoietic cell therapy. FACT’s offices are established at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. The parent agencies of the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy are as below –

• International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT, founder)
• American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT; founder)
• NETCORD International consortium of 14 leading Cord Blood banks (joined in the year of 2004), and
• International Society for Hematotherapy and Graft Engineering (ISHAGE; merged with ISCT).

During mid 1990s, FACT got coalesced some separate standards of ISCT, ASBMT and ISHAGE. In the year of 2004, FACT started cooperating with NETCORD to revise the standards of the Cord Blood Accreditation. Then FACT/NETCORD standards were nailed down in the year of 2006 and then on, the Cord Blood banks are eventually got a new look with new system. However, only 4 US banks have been accredited under the new standards (as of June 2006). You can access FACT website search engine for checking the accreditation status for any given facility. Unlike cord blood bank, FACT accredited facilities are inspected once in three years and the process of the accreditation costs about $25000.
NETCORD/FACT or FACT accreditation is tailored in order to public cord blood banks that regularly supplies units for transplantation; whereas AABB chiefly inspects the processing laboratory and FACT inspection involves reviewing from the collection site to the clinical patient management and the team of inspection has a qualified transplant physician.
FACT accreditation cannot include all private cord blood banks since they do not have hold any control over the collection site. The collection, in private banking, is done where the patient has delivered the baby. However, there are some banks that can obtain FACT accreditation. These banks have limited number of facilities but committed collection teams.