WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — The Cleveland Cord Blood Center has earned three industry distinctions in recent weeks that place it among the top centers of its kind worldwide.
The latest distinction came Tuesday. The Health Resources Services Administration designated the Cleveland center a funded National Cord Blood Inventory bank, which includes a $2.4 million contract over three years, said Dr. Mary Laughlin, founder of and medical director for the center.
The center also recently received accreditation from the Foundation for Accreditation of Cellular Therapy and will join the National Marrow Donor Program to list cord blood units on a domestic and international registry that can be searched by transplant centers worldwide, said Laughlin, who also is a hematologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland and an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University.
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The distinctions push the center to the top of the cord-blood industry, but they also represent wins for Cleveland, Laughlin said. “Obstetricians are very keen” on the center that opened in October 2007, she said. “They feel this public bank is good for our community,” partly because it has collected, tested, tissue-typed, frozen and computer-inventoried thousands of units of cord blood from a racially diverse population.
Cord blood is collected from afterbirth and is used to treat patients who have diseases of the bone marrow and immune system, such as leukemia, Laughlin said. The cells also hold potential for regenerative medicine. For instance, preliminary studies show that newborns whose brains have been starved of oxygen during birth can be treated with stem cells from cord blood, she said.
“One of my patients who was cured calls cord blood the ultimate recycling,” Laughlin said.
Cleveland’s center is completely supported by philanthropy, she said. The Health Resources Services Administration contract will also support operations of the center, which has an annual budget of between $2.5 million and $3 million a year, Laughlin said.
The center is one of 10 members of the National Cord Blood Inventory, Laughlin said.
In addition to the center, legislators are considering raising the profile of blood-cord donation. House Bill 102, which is pending in the Ohio General Assembly, would require the state Department of Health to have information on blood cord banking, and encourage medical staff to provide those materials to expectant mothers before the third trimester.
