News & Events | Press Release: Puget Sound Blood Center Named Recipient of National Cord Blood Funds

The Blood Center among first blood banks to receive the Heath Resources and Services Administration money

NOVEMBER 8, 2006, SEATTLE WA — The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services named Puget Sound Blood Center as one of six umbilical cord blood banks to receive funds to begin collections for the National Cord Blood Inventory (NCBI). Only five other organizations were accepted to receive such funding. The award recognizes the quality of the Blood Center’s cord blood program and will ensure the ongoing viability of the Blood Center’s efforts to establish a diverse bank of cord blood units for our community.

The need to have a larger repository of cord blood units nationally has been recognized by Congress and funds have been made available to support qualified cord blood banks. According to HRSA Administrator Betty Duke, this first year’s collections should help add 10,500 new units of cord blood to the NCBI. The Cord Blood Program currently stores more than 4000 high quality cord blood units. The cord blood units have been made available by new parents choosing to make the donation through participating medical centers and hospitals.

The Blood Center’s Cord Blood Program was the first cord blood bank in the Northwest and is the only bank in the state of Washington. Cells collected by the Cord Blood Program are made available to patients worldwide. “The use of cord blood as a cell source in blood and marrow transplantation is growing rapidly nationally and internationally,” says Thomas Price, M.D., executive vice president and medical director of the Blood Center. “The need is expected to grow approximately twenty percent per year over the next several years.”

“The Blood Center has become a leader in cord blood banking with the help of many organizations including the Hawaii Cord Blood Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Boeing, all the area medical centers and hospitals who collect the units and others,” emphasizes Puget Sound Blood Center’s Margery Moogk. “It is truly a team effort.” Local medical institutions participating in the Cord Blood Program include Swedish Medical Center (in Ballard and on First Hill), Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Evergreen Hospital, Stevens Hospital and University of Washington Medical Center. In Hawaii, participating sites are Kapi'olani, Tripler, Queen's and Kaiser Permanente Medical Centers in Honolulu which provides expanded ethnic diversity to the bank.

Background
Bone marrow and blood-forming cells collected from blood have long been the primary source of blood stem cells, which are vital to the treatment of many life-threatening diseases. In addition to treating leukemia, blood stem cells can be used to help patients with anemia, Hodgkin's lymphoma, immune deficiency disorders, bone marrow failure conditions and many other serious diseases. Research has shown that umbilical cord blood contains a high concentration of progenitor cells.

Taking an early interest in the potential of umbilical cord blood as a source of stem cells, Puget Sound Blood Center established its Cord Blood Program in 1998 in cooperation with the Hawaii Cord Blood Bank. This partnership with the Hawaii program allows the Puget Sound Blood Center to stand out among other banks around the country because of its racial diversity. The donor population in Hawaii offers a uniquely high number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, supplementing the populations found in the Pacific Northwest, providing a greater likelihood of matching blood stem cells to some recipients.

Puget Sound Blood Center serves patients in more than 70 hospitals and outpatient clinics in 14 Western Washington serving patients with leukemia, cancer, burns, hemophilia and traumatic injuries who depend on transfusion and the breakthrough discoveries made by Blood Center scientists. The Blood Center is internationally recognized as a leader in transfusion medicine and operates the world's largest transfusion service. The Northwest Tissue Services, a division of the Blood Center, administrators the Cord Blood Program.