St. Francis joins effort to turn discarded blood into life-saving stem cells
6/25/09
St. Francis Hospital has partnered with the Brady Kohn Foundation to help preserve umbilical cord blood, which can be used to treat a wide variety of diseases.
Umbilical cord blood contains young, immature stem cells, which have a much greater ability than adult stem cells to adapt to the kinds of cells needed in a sick person’s body.
Under the new program, announced Monday, June 22, all women giving birth at the hospital will be given the option to donate their baby’s cord blood at no cost.
The Brady Kohn Foundation is named for a 2 1/2 year-old-old local boy who died in 2002 when he was unable to get a cord blood transplant soon enough.
Read the full article at http://www.communitypub.com/news/x737338152/St-Francis-joins-effort-to-turn-discarded-blood-into-life-saving-stem-cells
Interesting side note about this is that Brady underwent an autologous stem cell transplant initially, which required his own cells to have been privately banked. Unfortunately, that was not enough to help save Brady. It does show that the privately banked cells were the only cells that the family was able to access, further validating the benefit of either donating or privately banking.
