News & Events | Puget Sound Blood Center Executive Honored by National Tissue Banking Organization

Puget Sound Blood Center Executive Honored by National Tissue Banking Organization

AATB standardizes the operations of participating tissue banks throughout the United States and to achieve nationally recognized uniform levels of safety and quality

SEPTEMBER 8, 2003, SEATTLE — The American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB), a scientific organization that sets the quality standards for tissue banking nationally, recently presented Mike Strong, Ph.D, executive vice president of operations at Puget Sound Blood Center and the founding Director of the Blood Center’s Northwest Tissue Services, with the prestigious George W. Hyatt Memorial Award. Conferred to Dr. Strong during the 27th annual AATB meeting in San Diego, California, Aug. 23-26, the award recognized Dr. Strong’s significant contributions to the advancement of tissue banking.

Blood Center executive, Dr. Mike Strong (left), receives
award for high standards in Tissue Banking

The Hyatt Award, first presented in 1995, is given each year to an individual scientist who has demonstrated exemplary research, teaching and service in the field of tissue banking, tissue transplantation or transplantation medicine. Past recipients of the award include noted scientists Julie Glowacki, Ph.D, director of Skeletal Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and Kenneth W. Sell, M.D., Ph.D, of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I am pleased to receive this acknowledgement on behalf of Northwest Tissue Services,” said Dr. Strong, just after the award ceremony. “The Hyatt Award has come to embody the high standards to which accredited tissue banks must strive in all aspects of tissue banking and transplantation. Since its founding more than 15 years ago, Northwest Tissue Services has upheld this standard and remains committed to the responsible stewardship of the community tissue supply.”

With more than 30 years of experience spanning blood and tissue banking, Dr. Strong is an internationally recognized authority in cellular cryopreservation, transplantation and transfusion medicine and tissue banking. He established the Northwest Tissue Services, a department of Puget Sound Blood Center in 1988 and later helped implement the nucleic acid test (NAT), now being used to screen half the nation’s blood supply.

A non-voting member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, Dr. Strong also serves as a research professor for the Department of Surgery and Orthopaedics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Formerly, he had a distinguished career as a Naval Officer where he headed the Naval Research Institute’s Clinical and Experimental Immunology Department and was instrumental in establishing the National Marrow Donor Registry.

Internationally, AATB has contributed its tissue banking expertise to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Tissue Bank program, which was established to introduce high quality standards of tissue banking to developing countries internationally by establishing tissue banks, training associated staff and developing standards and regulatory guidelines.

About The Puget Sound Blood Center
Internationally recognized for groundbreaking research in transfusion and transplantation medicine, the nonprofit Puget Sound Blood Center is the resource for patients in Western Washington who need blood, tissue and specialized laboratory services. Founded in 1944, the Blood Center has a long and unique tradition of blending community volunteerism, medical science and research to improve patients’ lives. The Blood Center, which serves patients in more than 70 hospitals and clinics in 14 counties with blood services, provides tissue and transplantation support to 185 hospitals across the Northwest.