March 31, 2003 - The National Cord Blood
Program (NCBP) of New York Blood Center announced today that it
had just collected its 20,000th donation of cord blood. This represents
a major milestone for this full-service testing, collection, distribution
and storage Program that was begun in February, 1993. Cord blood
provides an alternative to stem cells obtained through bone marrow
transplantation. Stem cells for cord blood, unlike those from bone
marrow transplants, can be banked prior to use. The year the program
was launched, the New York Blood Center provided the graft for the
world's first transplant of cord blood to an unrelated recipient.
Since that time and with the addition of the 20,000th unit, nearly
1,350 transplants have been performed using cord blood from the
Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program. The results of the first
562 recipients of unrelated cord blood transplants were published
in a groundbreaking article that appeared in the November 26, 1998
edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The NCBP currently operates collection
facilities at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, North Shore- Long Island
Jewish Health Systems, New York Presbyterian Hospital Cornell Weill
Medical Center, and Inova Hospital in Fairfax, VA. Two new collection
sites, opening shortly, with support from a recent most generous
gift of $5 million from the Starr Foundation, are Maimonides Medical
Center in Brooklyn, NY and University Hospitals in Cleveland, OH.
As Dr. Pablo Rubinstein, head of NCBP emphasizes,
"the mother is the heroine. She is the one who provides consent
to donate cord blood so that a stranger suffering from a blood disorder
such as leukemia, may enjoy a healthy and renewed life. Today we
are happy to acknowledge the generosity of all the mothers who have
donated to the Program".
The National Cord Blood Program offers
patients suffering from potentially fatal diseases, new hope. Cord
blood is as ethnically diverse as the pool of newborns. The Program
broadens this donor pool and increases the chance that a genetically
compatible match will be found. Cord blood has some advantages over
bone marrow as a source of blood generating stem cells: The incidence
of graft vs. host disease, in which the immune cells of the donated
stem cells attack the patient is markedly lower; stem cells from
cord blood can be transplanted to unrelated recipients who are not
perfectly matched; such stem cells are easier to harvest than bone
marrow and are more consistently free of common infections.
Since its inception, the NCBP has collaborated
with transplant physicians at 90 clinical centers in the U.S. and
74 transplant centers in 26 other countries to provide these stem
cells. To date, more than 60 blood-disorder related diseases have
been treated with cord blood. A medical seminar will be held in
October 2003 to commemorate the tenth year anniversary of the Program.