Initiative will help make life-saving stem cell therapy available to more patients
AURORA, Colo. (Nov. 13, 2006) – The University of Colorado Cord Blood Bank (UCCBB) has been awarded $1 million in federal funding by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to assist in establishing a national cord blood inventory of 150,000 cord blood units. UCCBB will use the money to process and preserve additional cord blood units at its facility in Aurora, Colo., where units will be made accessible to patients nationwide through a coordinating center. UCCBB is slated to receive up to $6.6 million over the next three years to bank up to 4,600 cords, pending continued funding by Congress in 2007 and 2008.
Donated cord blood is collected from the umbilical cord and placenta and is tested, frozen and stored at accredited cord blood banks such as UCCBB for future use in treating many adults and children with certain types of leukemia and other blood diseases. Before the use of cord blood transplantation, patients relied solely on bone marrow transplants where identifying a donor match can often prove difficult.
The principal investigator on the contract, Brian Freed, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center’s School of Medicine and executive director of ClinImmune Labs, said: “We are proud that the University of Colorado Cord Blood Bank was chosen by HRSA to participate in this national effort to expand the supply of umbilical cord blood. A number of exciting studies published in the past 10 years strongly indicate that umbilical cord blood transplantation is, in many cases, an excellent therapy for many of the 10,000 patients for whom a bone marrow transplant donor cannot be identified. This contract will give our bank, several Colorado hospitals, and a number of Colorado mothers donating their newborn babies’ cords, the opportunity to expand our bank’s cord blood inventory and give the gift of life to others throughout the world.”
UCCBB currently collects cord blood at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., and will be expanding its cord blood unit donations to include University of Colorado Hospital and Denver Health Medical Center in Denver.
UCCBB is a part of ClinImmune Labs, a subsidiary of the UCDHSC School of Medicine. Accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), UCCBB has been banking and distributing umbilical cord blood for human transplantation since 1996. More than 10,700 women have banked more than 6,700 cord blood units at UCCBB, of which 350 have been used in transplant at 93 different transplant centers in the United States and abroad. UCCBB also provides cord blood for peer-reviewed research conducted by stem cell investigators in Michigan, New York, Tennessee and Colorado.
The School of Medicine faculty work to advance science and improve care as the physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Denver Health, National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the Veterans Administration Medical Center. The School is part of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. For more information, visit the Web site at www.uchsc.edu or the UCDHSC Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.