Lack of patient access limits promising cell therapy
By Ginger Rough
The Arizona Republic
PHOENIX (Aug. 30, 2009) Among the many decisions that parents face before the birth of their child is a potentially critical one: whether to preserve their infant's umbilical-cord blood on the chance that he or she will need it someday to treat a serious illness.
Parents can pay thousands of dollars to privately store their newborn's umbilical-cord blood or they can donate the blood to a public bank for free.
Nine out of 10 new parents do neither, which means their children's umbilical cords are discarded as medical waste.
That discard rate is posing a threat to the expansion of a promising new health-care field. ...
... In December 2007, Al Copeland lay in a Phoenix hospital bed, weak and painfully thin, dying of a rare form of leukemia.
For three days, doctors and nurses at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center checked his vitals and took him to radiation treatments.
IV drips delivered doses of poisonous medicines - the chemotherapy needed to kill off his cancerous blood cells and immune system in preparation for a bone-marrow transplant.
Copeland rested and waited.
Two days before the surgery, he awoke to see one of his nurses crying.
His donor, for reasons still unknown to him, had backed out.
The medicines designed to get his body ready for the transplant had done their job efficiently.
Copeland wouldn't survive long because the chemotherapy had damaged his cells beyond repair.
Physicians feared they'd have a hard time finding another match. Copeland is African-American, and historically, there are far fewer matches for minorities in the National Marrow Donor Program.
So they turned to a less common option: umbilical-cord blood donated to a public bank.
"He didn't have much time," said Copeland's physician, Dr. Jeff Schriber, who also is medical director of Banner's Blood and Marrow Transplant Program. "Fortunately, we were able to get the cord blood quickly."
Copeland has been cancer-free for 18 months. A proponent of public banking, he is a regular at Banner's oncology unit, where he visits transplant patients. He keeps their spirits up, soothes their fears and lends a sympathetic ear.
In a way, Copeland thinks cancer saved his life. "It made me realize there's a lot more to living than just getting up in the morning, putting on your shoes and socks and going to work each day."
