Christiana Care Health System is joining the effort to encourage donation of cord blood from newborn babies’ umbilical cords.
Christiana Care announced Wednesday it is teaming up with CORD:USE, an organization that banks cord blood. The partnership aims to educate mothers on the benefits of cord blood and facilitate donations.
Christiana Care Chief Medical Officer Janice Nevin says she feels the program is an innovative way to make a difference.
“We partner with our families who can donate cord blood; we partner with CORD:USE, who has an innovative way of storing it; and in the future it becomes the lifeline for so many patients, many of whom will be in Delaware, but frankly, we’re making a difference around the world with this program,” said Nevin.
Christiana Care officials say they chose to work with CORD:USE specifically because they believe their program provides the safest and highest quality banking of cord blood. After delivery, the umbilical cord is cut and clamped; the cord blood is collected and taken by a courier to a bank where it is given an identification number. The stem cells are then extracted and stored cryogenically via liquid nitrogen. All cord blood banks are regulated by the FDA, which has developed standards for regulating collection and storage.
[caption id="attachment_47780" align="alignright" width="300" caption="CORD:USE spokesperson and Philadelphia 76'ers hall of famer Julius "Dr. J" Erving congratulates a new mother and thanks them for their decision to donate their newborn baby's umbilical cord blood."]
Former Philadelphia 76ers Hall of Famer Julius Erving, who leads CORD:USE’s “Cord Blood Saves Lives…it’s a Slam Dunk” campaign, was part of Tuesday’s partnership announcement. Erving says even small gains in donation could make a big difference. Currently only 5 percent of new mothers store their cord blood.
“If we could double that it would be amazing,” Erving said. “Suddenly you’d have twice as much available. The little wins, day by day make us real happy.”
Erving says his interest use of cord blood in medical treatment stems from the loss of his brother to lupus in 1969, and his sister to colon cancer in 1984. In 2005, He helped lobby Congress to pass legislation increasing cord blood stem-cell research, and differentiate it from other stem-cell research using embryos.
“There’s nothing controversial about what we do,” Erving said. “We wait full-term, the baby is born and the mother and father make a decision whether to donate or not, and after they donate we put it in the bank and find matches.”
Non-embryonic stem cells from cord blood have been used in over 20,000 transplants with treatments of over 70 life-threatening diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell disease. Stem cells, also found in bone marrow, are unspecialized cells and have the potential to develop into specialized cells and can potentially be used to replace tissue damaged or destroyed by disease or injury.
Blood found in the umbilical cord of newborns has the same cells as bone marrow, but offer some additional advantages.
Many patients die from their disease while waiting for a donor. The average wait for cord blood is about three weeks compared to 6 months to a year or longer for bone marrow. Also, the procedure for donating bone marrow is very painful, while thousands of umbilical cords are discarded each day after babies are delivered from a mother’s womb.
Cord blood stem cells also have a much greater capability of regeneration, due to its young age and being unaffected by disease, and because the blood is primitive, the odds are much lower that the cells will invade the recipient’s body resulting in what’s known as Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD).
Cord blood transplants are also, ultimately cheaper and easier to obtain. Bone marrow transplants can cost as much as $300,000 or more, while cord blood transplants are about a third of that cost, sometimes less, and don’t require as much follow-up, reducing the costs further.
According to Dr. John Wagner, chief clinical scientific advisor for CORD:USE, and a Newark High School and University of Delaware graduate, doctors are also making strides in their research of cord blood stem cells. Researching stem cell expansion cultures to increase the number of stem cells in umbilical cord blood has resulted in a 400-fold expansion.
“We’ve created this new technology that now not only means that patients can get out of the hospital more quickly, more rapid recovery, fewer infections, but this also means that the cord blood inventory around the world is much more useful,” said Dr. Wagner. “Even the smallest units that have been collected, that we really can’t use otherwise, now can be used in the future.”
“We’re in the midst of a clinical trial now, but it’s beyond my expectation.” he added.
Christiana Care has received donations of 70 units of cord blood in the past three weeks, but Dr. Richard Derman, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology, believes patient education on the methods and costs may lead to more.
“We would like an informed patient, but even when they have questions when they come in, it’s not too late. The new technology allows us to go ahead share that information, even late in the game, and have people agree to do this,” said Dr. Derman. There is no financial burden at all. There is no charge for public banking.”