Consumer health · Newborn stem cell banking
Anja Health
A private cord blood, cord tissue and placenta bank built on TikTok, grown to about 2,000 families and $1.5 million a year, and sold in 2026. The storage was always done by someone else.
The first kit
“At 11:37 pm on a Saturday night in October 2021, I handheld our first parent through placing their umbilical cord into our kit.”
Kathryn Cross wrote that looking back from 2026. She walked the parent through the collection, then the courier, then the lab technician who processed it in Allendale, New Jersey. Afterwards she sent the family flowers. She was 22, had no clinical training, and had a TikTok account, a waitlist on the free tier of Typeform, and a reason.
What cord blood can and cannot do
Cord blood is what remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after birth. It carries hematopoietic progenitor cells, used for decades to rebuild marrow in patients with leukemia, lymphoma, inherited anemias and certain immune and metabolic disorders. More than 35,000 such transplants had been performed by 2019, according to ACOG.
The FDA draws a hard line through the category. A unit banked for an unrelated patient is a biological product and must be licensed or covered by an investigational application. A unit banked privately for the child or a close relative needs no approval before use, though the establishments handling it must register, screen donors and follow good tissue practice. Registration is the part that gets marketed, and the agency is blunt about it: “Registration with FDA doesn’t mean a firm is "endorsed" by the agency, it simply means the firm has notified FDA that it is performing one or more manufacturing steps.”
The harder number is how often a family uses what it stored. ACOG puts the lifetime probability of developing an indication for an autologous transplant between 1 in 400 and 1 in 2,500. A child who develops leukemia cannot use their own unit, because the premalignant cells are already in it. ACOG and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend public donation over private banking, excepting families who already have a relative with a treatable condition.
Andrew
Cross was three and her brother Andrew was one when he nearly drowned. He was left with cerebral palsy and could not walk or talk. Her mother went looking for treatments and found the cord blood trials Joanne Kurtzberg was running at Duke. Andrew’s own cord blood had not been saved, so the family searched the public registry. Both children are half Chinese and half white, matching runs on inherited tissue types, and donor pools skew white and higher income. They never found one.
It is worth sitting with what that story argues for. The unit Andrew needed was an allogeneic one from an unrelated donor of similar ancestry, which is the case for a deeper and more diverse public inventory. ACOG makes the same point from the other side: minority populations are significantly underrepresented in public and private banks alike. Anja sold private family storage. The two things are related, they are not the same, and the company built its brand in the gap between them.
Seven videos a day
Cross started posting in June 2021 to test whether anyone cared. Her hundred slot waitlist filled in under a month. She kept up seven videos a day for three years, reaching about 160,000 followers on the founder account alone, raised $400,000 before Y Combinator, got into the Winter 2022 batch as a solo founder, and closed a $4.5 million seed led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six.
Content did not scale the way the model needed. In December 2023 she moved to New York and spent six months walking into obstetrics offices, the same field sales grind the incumbents had run for thirty years. The company reached about 2,000 families and $1.5 million in annual revenue with seven employees.
The handoff
On May 4, 2026 Cross published an essay titled “I sold Anja Health”. A month later the company named Jan Chen chief executive; Chen had been head of international sales at FamilyCord, a rival bank. No source reviewed here names the buyer or the price. The corporate history changed with the ownership: a June 16, 2026 release credits a leadership team with 18 years in the field and service to families since 2008. Anja Health was founded in June 2021.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Who stores the units | Vitalant Cord Blood Services, Allendale, New Jersey. Banking began there in 1996 and the laboratory has processed more than 40,000 units. Anja performs no processing or storage. | Company-stated |
| Accreditation | The AABB, CAP and ASHI accreditations, CLIA certification, FDA registration and licences in four states belong to Vitalant, not to Anja. Anja’s lab page states the distinction correctly: FDA registers establishments rather than approving them. | Company-stated |
| The same claim elsewhere | The shop page advertises an FDA-approved and AABB-accredited lab, and FDA-approved materials. The how it works page says FDA-registered. FDA does not approve laboratories. | Differs from the record |
| New York licensure | The state list of cord blood banks licensed to collect in New York names two Allendale programs and does not name Anja Health. It still carries banks that have closed, so its currency is uncertain. | Public record |
| Cerebral palsy | Sun and colleagues, 2017, NCT01147653. Double blind, placebo controlled, 63 children. Primary endpoint not met: no difference in mean change in Gross Motor Function Measure-66 at one year. A benefit appeared only in a post hoc analysis of the higher dose group. | Public record |
| Autism | Dawson and colleagues, 2020. Randomised, 180 children aged 2 to 7. No significant benefit on the primary social communication outcome. Children without intellectual disability improved on language, attention and EEG measures. | Public record |
| Marketed future uses | The shop page lists cord tissue as potentially treating heart and liver disease, and placenta as potentially treating cardiovascular issues, acne scars, wound healing and eye injuries. The founder’s blog raises dementia and anti-aging. None is an approved use. | Beyond the evidence |
| The 85 diseases figure | Cited by the founder as the number of diseases FDA approves cord blood to treat. It is an industry count of conditions treatable by hematopoietic transplant, not a count of approvals. | Differs from the record |
Read plainly: the operating substance was real. An accredited laboratory did the work and two families used a stored unit for a sibling, the one private banking indication the professional societies endorse. The marketing holds up less well. The site sold a future in which stored cells treat heart disease, dementia and acne scars, and the two randomised trials behind the cerebral palsy and autism case both missed their primary endpoints.
What to watch
- Whether the buyer is ever named. Nothing reviewed here identifies it.
- Whether the claim of service since 2008 gets reconciled with a 2021 founding date.
- Whether the FDA-approved language is corrected to FDA-registered across every page.
- Whether Anja appears in its own name on an AABB or state licence roster, rather than through Vitalant.
- Results from the Duke IMPACT trial, successor to the failed autism study.
In their words
“I founded Anja Health in June 2021 in memory of my younger brother, Andrew, who passed away suddenly in February 2021 from complications with cerebral palsy and pneumonia.”
Kathryn Cross, founder, May 2026 · Founder statement
“We had always hoped that someday Andrew could be a patient in a cord blood study for cerebral palsy, but he eventually aged out of being eligible for the treatment and he passed away at 19.”
Kathryn Cross, Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood, 2023 · Guest column
“Right now, the FDA approves around 85 diseases to be treated with cord blood.”
Kathryn Cross, Sacra, June 2022 · Differs from the record
“It is important for parents to be aware that at this time, there are no scientific data to support the claim that autologous cord blood is a tissue source proven to be of value for regenerative medical purposes, although researchers are examining this possibility”
American Academy of Pediatrics, 2017 · Public record
“The routine collection and storage of umbilical cord blood with a private cord blood bank is not supported by the available evidence”
ACOG Committee Opinion 771, 2019 · Public record
“It’s not a surprise; it is nonetheless a disappointment,”
Arnold Kriegstein, UC San Francisco, on the Duke autism result, Spectrum, 2020 · Independent
“Today, Anja Health has the infrastructure, the lab relationships, the regulatory experience, and the team to service Anja’s customers without interruption.”
Kathryn Cross on the sale, May 2026 · Founder statement
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordCord Blood Banking, Information for Consumers
- Public recordCommittee Opinion No. 771, Umbilical Cord Blood Banking
- Public recordCord Blood Banking for Potential Future Transplantation
- Public recordAutologous Cord Blood Infusion and Motor Function in Cerebral Palsy
- Public recordCord Blood Banks Licensed to Collect in New York
- Public recordEDGAR search for Anja Health, zero results
- IndependentCord Blood Study Provides Insights on Benefits, Limitations for Autism
- IndependentStudy finds little evidence to back cord-blood therapy for autism
- IndependentFamily Bank profile: Anja Health
- IndependentPitch deck a 23-year-old TikTok star used to land $4.5 million
- IndependentI got into Y Combinator as a solo founder
- InterviewKathryn Cross on the future of stem cell therapy
- CompanyAnja Health Raises $4.5M Seed Funding Round
- CompanyAnja Health Appoints Jan Chen as CEO
- CompanyAnja Health Expands Partnership with Vitalant
- FounderI sold Anja Health
- CompanyLab, How it Works, Shop and founder story pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
