Up until January 2005, 12 research grants have been given to researchers based in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Selection of successful grant recipients is carried out by an assessment team of doctors and researchers who give their time and expertise to select suitable research projects according to the criteria set down by Inner Wheel Australia.

Results from some of the research projects have already come to fruition:

A more efficient bag has been designed for the collection and transportation of cord blood once it has been collected from the mother and baby. This new bag is now being used.

Suzanne McLeod and IWA PP Robyn White being shown by April Goodear, the cord blood collection bag developed with one of the first Inner Wheel research grants.	Daryl Coleman, Joan Davies, and April Goodear inspecting the storage facility at the Cord Blood Bank, Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, New South Wales.

The volume of a cord blood transplant is very small and could only be used on small children or small-framed adults. Researchers have found ways to increase the volume and the use of dual cord blood transplants. For the first time at Sydney's Children's Hospital, cords from two different babies have been used for a successful transplant for a teenage boy with leukaemia. He is presently in remission.

Some of the results of the research being carried out have been published and given international recognition.

The researchers are most appreciative of the funding being provided by Inner Wheel in Australia. In the words of one of the researchers "Inner Wheel's initiative is to be congratulated. The sources of this funding for applied research of this nature are very scarce and yet it is critical in order to advance important new areas of endeavour, such as cord blood banking".

A detailed list of grants and the names of the researchers involved may be viewed by going to

List of Research Grants and Researchers