SYRACUSE -- Upstate Medical University's Community campus will be home to a new $15 million umbilical cord blood bank.

Four year-old Luca Vassallo might not have understood why he was standing along side doctors and politicians at Monday's ceremonial ground breaking of Upstate Medical University's new umbilical cord blood bank -  but he is living proof of what it can accomplish.

"By the time he was 10 weeks old, they were able to determine he was born with leukemia," said his mother Manal Vassallo.

Luca received an umbilical cord blood transfusion. The blood is a rich source of stem cells that can be used to treat serious diseases, including cancer.

"We're taking really these genetic blueprint cells and putting them into a human body and they home in on where they need to go and they morph into what they need to be," said the chairman of Upstate's Pathology Department, Dr. Robert Corona.

Upstate will have the 29th public cord blood bank in the U.S. and only the second one in New York state. Doctors can take the blood from the umbilical cord after the mother has delivered a baby but the valuable stem cells are often thrown out as medical waste if there is not a cord blood bank nearby.

Luca Vassallo is now cancer free and his parents hope others expecting families will learn about cord blood - and donate.

"There's no harm to the baby or the mother who is donating - and it could potentially save another person's life," said Manal Vassallo.

Geralyn Saya's son received a cord blood transfusion to treat a rare form of leukemia. Saya now wants others to understand how important it is to donate umbilical cord blood rather than throw it away. "Somebody saved my son's life that I don't know and I wish I could thank her and I can't. So that's why I want to thank every mother out there who's going to give their baby's umbilical cord - because you're going to save somebody's life."

Upstate hopes they will bring in 10,000 cord blood donations a year. That would be blood from half of all the births that take place in Central New York each year.