By Anthony Oliva, PhD
Updated October 07, 2026
Adult stem cell banking is a narrow service, and it is easy to confuse with the things around it. American Cell Technology (ACT) banks adult cells from adipose (fat) tissue and from bone marrow. In the adipose route, ACT takes a small sample of your own tissue, isolates the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from it, multiplies them in culture, and banks them in vials of 10 million live cells, ready for you and your physician to decide what happens next.3
Six assumptions come up regularly about this subject and how it works. Here is each one, and what is actually the case.
| The myth | What is actually the case |
|---|---|
| Something will be done with the cells | Banking is storage. What happens afterwards is decided later, with your physician |
| You will probably never use them | A forecast, not a fact. What can be checked is how many cells you have, that they were counted and confirmed viable, and how long it takes to get them |
| You are too old for it to be worth doing | Your age and the age of your cells are not the same thing |
| It is something you do for a newborn | Newborn banking is a different service. Adult banking exists, with a different collection |
| The bank decides what happens to the cells | Release happens on request, on terms set in advance |
| The cells come from embryos | Adult banking works with tissue from the adult being banked |
Myth: banking means something will be done with the cells
Banking is storage, and nothing follows from it automatically. ACT collects a small sample through your physician, isolates the mesenchymal stem cells, multiplies them in culture, confirms the count and quality, and holds them for you. That is where our part ends.
Whatever happens afterwards is a separate decision, made at a different time, by you and your physician together, and it depends on what is available and appropriate for you when that conversation happens. Having the cells banked does not oblige you to anything, and it does not mean anyone has decided anything on your behalf.
Myth: you will probably never use them
This one is usually said as a prediction, and it is already out of date. Physicians are working with autologous cells today and there is clinical research behind it, so the question is not whether cells like yours get used at all. What nobody can forecast is which additional modifications and use cases will exist twenty years from now.
What you can know now is what you would be holding. Each vial ACT banks holds 10 million live mesenchymal stem cells, counted and confirmed before freezing, so the quantity is measured rather than estimated. Initial processing takes about six weeks from collection, and after that access is three weeks’ notice under the basic plan or within 48 hours with a prepaid Bio-Insurance plan.
Myth: you are too old for your cells to be worth banking
The reasoning is intuitive. You are 62, so your cells are 62, and 62-year-old cells must be worse than 30-year-old ones. That is not how it works.
Your age and the age of your cells are not the same thing
A number like 62 describes when you were born, not how your body has aged. Cells in different tissues turn over at very different rates. Some immune cells last only hours. The lens of your eye is the same one you were born with. How old a cell is biologically depends largely on how much it has been used, not on how long you have been alive.
The stem cells in fat are rarely called on to regenerate tissue, unlike the ones in bone marrow, which stay constantly active, and adipose tissue turns over on a cycle measured in years. Two people of the same age can carry cells of very different quality, and the same person carries cells of very different ages in different tissues.
What ACT’s own telomere study showed
Organs do not age at the same rate, and adipose tissue is where that shows up most clearly. Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, and they shorten each time a cell divides, which makes their length a reasonable proxy for how much work a cell has already done.
In ACT’s own telomere study, comparing umbilical cord, bone marrow and adipose samples, one of the longest telomeres in the entire study came from an 88-year-old’s adipose-derived cells. In other words, being older does not mean the cells worth banking are gone.
Myth: stem cell banking is only for newborns
Banking for newborns does exist. In that case, the cells are taken from the umbilical cord at the moment of birth, which is a different service, and within our portfolio it is VitalCells that handles it.
What the myth gets wrong is the assumption that it stops there. Mesenchymal stem cells are present in adult tissue throughout life, which is why adult banking exists at all. The difference is in the collection, not in the biology. A newborn collection is tied to a single moment and cannot be repeated. An adult collection has no window, and comes from a short procedure on your own fat tissue in your physician’s office.
Adult banking is what ACT does, and what the processing fee covers, and what is billed separately sets out what that involves in practice.
Myth: the bank decides how your cells get used
Clients own their cells, and ACT is the custodian. Release happens at your physician’s request, and where the cells go, or whether they go anywhere at all, is decided between the two of you.
Initial processing takes about six weeks from collection. After that, the notice period is three weeks under the basic plan, or within 48 hours with a prepaid Bio-Insurance plan, where the cells have already been grown and tested.
Myth: the cells come from embryos
They do not. Adult tissue contains its own stem cells, and the entire category of adult banking rests on that. Mesenchymal stem cells are multipotent stromal cells found in adult tissue and defined by an established set of surface markers and differentiation behaviors (Dominici et al., 2006).
Getting a straight answer for your own situation
What banking actually is: a sample of your own fat tissue, collected in under an hour, turned into a documented quantity of your own live cells and held at minus 196 degrees Celsius until you decide otherwise.
The parts that vary are what your physician charges for the collection and what makes sense for your own situation. We can walk you through the rest before you have that conversation. If you would rather read first, the questions clients ask most often covers the ground.
Frequently asked questions
How much does adult stem cell banking cost?
There is no single figure, because two parties are involved. ACT charges a fee for stem cell processing and your physician charges for the collection. The annual banking fee is $350 a year from year two onward, with the first year included in the processing fee.
How long does stem cell processing take?
About six weeks from the time your sample reaches the lab, covering isolation, culture expansion, counting and viability confirmation before anything is banked.
Do you need a diagnosis to bank your cells?
No. Eligibility runs from newborns to older adults, and an existing condition does not automatically disqualify you. People with known chronic viral conditions can bank their cells. ACT does recommend screening for communicable disease before banking. If a treatment for that condition becomes available years from now, the bank does not want to be returning a cell product carrying the same infection back to the person it came from. The screening is billed separately, and your physician can advise on the route.
Where does the collection happen?
In your physician’s office. The collection takes about fifteen minutes, with roughly twenty minutes beforehand for the local anesthesia, and most people are in and out in under an hour.
References
Dominici M, Le Blanc K, Mueller I, et al. Minimal criteria for defining multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells. Cytotherapy. 2006;8(4):315 to 317. doi:10.1080/14653240600855905
Blackburn EH. Structure and function of telomeres. Nature. 1991;350(6319):569 to 573. doi:10.1038/350569a0
This blog is for educational purposes only. American Cell Technology does not provide medical advice or make claims. Please consult your physician with any medical questions.
