Umbilical cord blood donation

Dr Lakshmi Balasubramanian, MD
Hematology/oncology
Texas Oncology, P.A.
Texas Cancer Center Round Rock
2410 Round Rock Ave Ste 150
Round Rock, TX 78681

Friends: In the past few days several questions have arisen about how to donate umbilical cord blood to NMDP.
Aside from this also encourage as many South Asian pregnant women as we can to donate their cord blood.

Your friends can call their obstetrician's office to discuss this further and see if would be able to donate where they deliver. Bigger cities have cord blood banks and make the donation process easy. Usually At the time of delivery when they get to labor and delivery they can indicate that they want to donate the umbilical cord for transplant purposes. The paperwork can be completed then and very simple. They will be asked whether they want to store it, donate it to the cord blood poll for transplant or discard it. They need to let them know they want to donate it.
When the baby is delivered, the people delivering the baby will take care of draining the blood from the cord and sending it to the cord bank (approved by NMDP) for testing, typing done with the cord blood and freezing.
Ethnicity matters even here.
While cord banks where the processed cord blood is cryopreserved (frozen) and stored are spread around the country in many large cities, they all belong to one NMDP cord blood database.

ADVANTAGES TO CORD BLOOD DONATION:
No risks involved
No effort involved
It does not need any processing from the donors part
Your personal information is not stored in any database
Does not take any additional time to donate and done at the time of delivery.
Cells can be stored for a long time and used anytime in future for a transplant.
Tissue (CORD BLOOD) is collected and stored at the time of delivery and readily available when we find the match. (Do not need to depend on a donor to be contacted and called in to donate).
No matter which cord bank it is stored in, it belongs in the NMDP database and can be utilized anywhere in the country.


ADVANTAGES TO THE CORD BLOOD TRANSPLANT
The matching does not need to be as precise since the stem cells from the cord are very primitive and less mature than marrow stem cells.
If the pool is large enough the odds of finding a match are higher
The population donating cords are diverse
Helps people of ethnic minority like us where the marrow donor pool is limited and the HLA matching has to be more precise.

LIMITATIONS OF CORD BLOOD TRANSPLANT
Few institutions around the country do it currently.
The amount of stem cells we can obtain from a cord is limited. This is now being overcome by double cord transplants even if the second cord is not that great a match.
The cord blood bank is still building. We encourage more donors.


SPREAD THE WORD!
Encourage as many pregnant Indian women as you know to donate their cords esp. in the next 2 months.

http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_Blood_Share_Life/How_to_Donate_Cord_Blood/index.html


Here is the list of hospitals that participate by state.

http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_Blood_Share_Life/How_to_Donate_Cord_Blood/CB_Participating_Hospitals/nmdp_cord_blood_hospitals.pl

Even if they don't particiapte, it seems there are ways to request.

You may be able to donate cord blood through Cryobanks International, which accepts donations from anywhere in the continental United States to be listed on the NMDP Registry. Call 1 (800) 869-8608 to learn about Cryobanks' eligibility requirements and process or visit their Web site at: www.cryo-intl.com/enroll/donating/.



For those who are curious on how and why it works, more up-to-date medical information on cord blood transplantation and its advantages pls refer to
www.cordbloodforum.org

Blog by Dr. Sripriya Santhanam

Blog by
Dr. Sripriya Santhanam,MD
Hematology/Oncology
Shivers Cancer Center
Brackenridge Hospital
E-mail:ssanthanam@seton.org

Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow.May patients are treated with chemotherapy.Bone marrow and stem cell transplants are a way of allowing much higher doses of chemotherapy to be given, to improve the chances of completely curing the leukemia.A person has only a 25 percent chance of finding a match within their own family,hence the desperate need to find an unrelated donor to save their life .

South Asians,especially Indians are woefully underrepresented in the national bone marrow registry.We make up only .1% of the 7 million names listed in the National Bone Marrow Donor registry – which means that matches for Indian are slimmer and the wait is longer.A Caucasian seeking a match in the registry averages 15 hits; a South Asian 1 or 0. Manish's chances of finding a match are less than 1 in 200,000. Often, the person does not survive while a search for a match is still going on. Chances of survival without Bone marrow transplant are less than 50 % only. Hence, if all members of Indian Community between the age of 18 through 60 years, men and women alike, have their name on the National Bone marrow Registry, it would help save hundreds of lives.

HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, and humans have many of them. But transplant doctors usually look at six - three inherited from the father and three from their mother.The actual process is much more complicated, but for a bone marrow transplant, the donor and recipient must match on at least five of these six antigens and also have a compatible blood type. The odds of two individuals matching range from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 50,000. The genetic component is what makes people from the same racial group more likely to match.You - through a simple cheek swab - could be that miracle match for Manish. Or for one of many other individuals waiting for a bone marrow match.(For those of you who are scared, this is NOT a blood test. No needles are involved that day!) If your bone marrow appears to be a suitable match for someone waiting for a transplant, you'll undergo a brief examination to ensure that your bone marrow can be transplanted. The doctor will want to rule out any genetic or infectious diseases you might have, since these can be passed on to the bone marrow recipient.

Peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation is a way to collect blood-forming cells for transplantation. The same blood-forming cells (sometimes called blood stem cells) that can be donated from the bone marrow are also found in the circulating (peripheral) blood. Before donation, a donor takes injections of a drug called filgrastim to move more blood-forming cells out of the marrow and into the bloodstream. Then the donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm. This process is similar to donating plasma.

Myths and facts about marrow donation:
http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Join_the_Donor_Registry/Myths_&_Facts_about_Marrow_Don/index.html

NMDP Registry Breakdown By Race Categories
Caucasian 75%
African American 8%
Asian / Pacific Islander 6%
Hispanic 8%
Native American 1%
Multi-Racial 2%