Story Published: Jan 18, 2010 at 4:35 PM PDT
Story Updated: Jan 25, 2010 at 2:46 PM PDT
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center cleared a hurdle in the use of umbilical cord blood, using a new life to help save another.
The breakthrough could make umbilical-cord-blood transplants a more widely-used method for treating blood cancers like leukemia.
"I mean it's amazing," said Colleen Delaney of the Fred Hutchison Center.
"You can take someone else's trash – right when a baby is born you give life to that infant – but at the same time you can save the cells from the umbilical cord and give life to someone else who potentially needs a life-saving transplant."
Delaney said researchers have expanded core blood cells before. However, they have never seen a significant clinical benefit.
This time, however, the center gained results in an effort to decrease the time patients go without white blood cells.
Delaney said: "I think what this study shows is that we've definitively shown that we can do this – that we can manipulate cells in the laboratory, infuse them in patients and actually see some benefit in terms of early recovery of white cells. We cut the time almost in half of recovery of white blood cells."
Researchers said on average it took 14 days for the transplanted cells to engraft. In the past, it took four weeks using non-expanded units of cord blood.
This time, seven of the 10 patients survived with no evidence of disease.
Ages of the patients involved in the research ranged between 3 and 43. Researchers now plan on more clinical trials – and hope to spread their new findings.
"Very excited," Delaney says. "My patients are really my heroes and this is a tremendous step forward."
So, as one life begins, another could be saved.
Ages of the patients involved in the research ranged between 3 and 43. Researchers now plan on more clinical trials – and hope to spread their new findings.